Immortal
by Lechery
Summary: FangxVanille & FangxLightning. "Immortal" follows the story of the l'Cie from Gran Pulse to their lives after the fight with Orphan. Love must struggle to survive.
1. Separation Anxiety

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: Thus far it's T, for violence. It promises to get sexier, so M eventually.

OOO

"Beautiful, isn't it, Fang?" Lightning stared at the expanse of Gran Pulse in awe of its ferine land. The sky stretched into oblivion, touched the earth at the horizon and exploded into the vast expanse of rolling planes and mountain ranges around them. From the back of the Eidolon Bahamut, it all looked utopian: fresh, wild and untouched. It was a brutal existence; with the freedom to live and survive came liberty without law, but it was freedom nonetheless, nature untainted by the reduced scope of humanity that saw the world only as a resource, a standing reserve to be used.

"Yes," Fang agreed, "It is." The light of the sunset cast Pulse in a pink-orange glow that highlighted the soldier's hair. Her fair complexion was lit by the fireball sun. Fang watched as Light became enthralled, chuckling to herself as the enchanted expression spread across the young woman's face. Her freckles were obvious in the sunlight, her nose slender to match the rest of her delicate, Aryan features. It was all very beautiful. Very lovely.

"Fang, we're back!" Vanille's voice sounded from somewhere behind her. Fang turned in the direction of the sound and reached for Vanille's hand. Vanille beamed, took her proffered hand and scrambled to the front of Bahamut where she settled in Fang's lap.

"Will we go to Oerba?" the young girl asked.

"Of course," Fang replied, leaning in to Vanille's ear. "Our focus is there."

Fang stared out at the Pulsian expanse and the seemingly endless horizon. From the corner of her vision, she caught Lightning's fleeting glance toward her. Light's neck flushed, her cheeks suddenly rose-tinted. Fang chuckled.

Vanille stared up at her, "What is it?"

She shook her head and smiled,

"Nothing. I'm happy to be home."

OOO

They landed on a glade in the Archylte Steppe, calmed by the tranquil ride over the alien paradise. The air was clean and refreshing. Morale was running high. Perhaps it was the adrenaline from the freefall, or the realisation that Pulse was the opposite of what they'd expected, but the light attitude was infectious. It was a careless mistake.

Hope skipped along the grass, tossing his boomerang into the air, catching it as it whipped back at him. Vanille was equally enthralled by it. She ran out into the field looking back at him as she went,

"Toss it over here!"

He leaned back and followed through with his body, hurling the boomerang into the sky. As it came back in an arch to return to him, Vanille intercepted the flight. She threw the boomerang back to him and he caught it. He turned back to the group.

"We're gonna go take a look around." He dashed out into the field, the boomerang prone in his hand.

Fang eyed Vanille worriedly and Lightning sensed her unease. "Snow, keep an eye on them."

"Way ahead of you, sis," he mock saluted her and bounded into the field after Hope and Vanille.

"First things first," Lightning said, turning to Fang, "Food, water, shelter."

Fang nodded. "Food and water are easiest to come by in the central expanse, north of here. Shelter is another matter."

"All business with you two already?" Sazh piped up from a shaded spot beside a large boulder. "Can't we rest?"

"You can rest," Fang replied. "Pulse is about survival. We need to make sure we have everything we need before we head to Oerba."

Light nodded, "Will you be alright alone?"

He stretched and yawned, the baby chocobo in his afro rummaging about before going quiet again, "We'll be just fine."

Fang shot Lightning a cheeky smirk. A smile pulled at Light's lips in return.

"Well, well, Sunshine," Fang remarked, "Looks like it's just you and me."

"Don't push your luck, Pulsian," she fired back.

Lightning marched ahead and Fang struggled to keep at her side, "We're a bit fiery today, aren't we?"

"Speak for yourself." She grinned and kept her eyes ahead, kept her laughter private.

Fang bit her lip, satisfied with her handiwork. Lightning turned and eyed her curiously.

"What?" She asked.

"Nothing," Fang replied. She averted her gaze from the soldier.

Lightning blushed easily, the curse of her fair complexion. She brushed off her emotion and lost herself in the landscape; suddenly overcome by the beauty of Pulse, she thought of the propaganda she'd grown up on in Bodhum. Pulse was nothing like the folklore or the late night broadcasts of Pulse l'Cie terrorism. She realised, with some incredulity, that the survivor's testimonies and the captured Pulse terrorists must have been staged –actors –hired by the SANCTUM army. The more she wandered through all the meandering intricacies of Pulse, the more her anger for the army grew, for the Guardian Corps, for all of the symbols that demanded such faith of her. All lies in exchange for passivity. She'd been played like a civilian; she'd thought herself better.

Trapped in her reverie, she failed to sense the danger nearby or to feel the long vine coiling around her calf before it clamped shut and pulled her to the ground. She yelped and Fang whipped around in time to see a series of Truffids –carnivorous plants –surround Lightning and attack her. Fang dashed back toward them and lanced the feral plants with the spear-tipped edge of her staff. They shrieked, jarring her senses. The sounds they made as she cut them sounded almost human. She focused instead on slicing through the vines and bright petals until she could see Lightning. Light held her hand out, grazing the tip of the staff. Fang reached for her and hauled her from the pit of the detritus.

"You okay?" She asked.

Lightning wiped the blood from her bottom lip and removed her sword from its sheath. Without a word, she charged at the mutant plants, cutting them down in a violent rage. She returned with added scratches to her hands and face and avoided Fang. Fang lifted two fingers to Light's chin, prompting her to turn. Light recoiled and batted her hand away.

"I'm fine," she said simply; she glanced at Fang before she continued toward the central expanse.

Fang pursed her lips and followed, unsure of what to expect when they'd reached their destination.

OOO

The sunlight poked through the narrow path between the two mountains. Fang and Light followed it to the opening where the hilly path spilled into a vast, flat prairie overrun by wildlife of the most exotic and brutal strain. A hint of a smile returned to Lightning's lips and their spirits lifted. Fang stood at her side gazing out at the many species of mutants.

"Plenty of goodies here, eh?" Fang smirked.

Light nodded, "Any favourites?"

"Gorgonopsid's are fairly easy to kill," she replied.

"Are they edible?" Lightning asked.

"Of course," she answered, "Taste like chicken."

Lightning rolled her eyes. "Anything else?"

"Not really," Fang shook her head, "Everything else tastes rather gamey. Those Truffids that attacked you make a decent salad."

"Well, I've been put off salad."

Fang grinned. "Grilled Gorgonopsid then?"

"Looks that way. Should we grab one?"

She nodded, "We'll carry it back."

Light unsheathed her sword, a gleam in her eye as she studied the blade. "Let's test out your theory."

They raced onto the field as a stray Gorgonopsid bounded into view. Lightning clipped its left paw with her sword and it yelped, limping as it turned around. She flanked the creature on the right; Fang took the left side. They came together with the mutant creature in the centre, tentative at first, prodding it, scraping its flesh with their tools. Lightning ran her tongue along her lips in anticipation, Fang's chest swelled. The Gorgonopsid's head undulated in delirium. Fang started again and penetrated the creature's flesh; Light watched as Fang dragged the buried staff from the opening before it was violently thrust back in. Lightning lifted her weapon and punctured through the thick skin; a squirt of blood escaped between the folds of the wound and the blade. They regarded their handiwork and looked up at each other for approval, finding satisfaction and delight in each other's eyes. As they pulled out, the creature staggered, dizzy from the pain and the loss of blood. Fang launched the creature up and Lightning followed: up, up, up where they held themselves balanced and lingering on the edge, deliciously, until the sudden last burst of life died in a fireball descent. And crashing down they came with limbs trembling, heads in a daze, blood and veins thrumming with a tribal pulse.

Panting and covered in blood, they hauled their victim into the shade, eying one another from the top of the corpse. Fang quartered the carcass while Lightning skinned the meat. Using the skin as a sac, they silently carried the meat through the path, back to the base camp at Vallis Media.

OOO

The base camp was empty. The boulder where Sazh was left napping was abandoned; the field where Vanille, Snow and Hope explored was deserted. Fang dropped the heavy sac on the ground and squinted into the sun.

"Bugger!" She shielded her eyes, "Where the hell did they get to?"

Lightning was digging a pit in the shade, "They're probably nearby."

Fang's eyes were fixed on the landscape, scanning for movements.

"We'll build a fire," Light continued, "They'll come once they see the smoke and get hungry."

When she received no response she looked up from her work, "Fang?"

"Hmm?" She refused to move.

Lightning ran her tongue along her bottom lip, "Could you get me some tinder?"

Fang nodded, tearing her eyes from the empty field ahead of them.

She returned with armfuls of moss and twigs that were tossed into the pit Light encircled with stones. Fang dragged the sac of Gorgonopsid parts over to the pit while Lightning held her hands over the dry tinder. Flames soared from Lightning's fingertips and flash-burned the moss; the twigs caught fire and burned lethargically. Together they skewered the filleted meat and held it over the fire. Black smoke trailed high into the air as the edges of the flesh burned. The scent of grilled steak filled their nostrils and their Pavlovian senses jolted to life: mouths watered, stomachs burned in anticipation.

Fang tore the flesh from the skewer with her front teeth, sucking in a breath of air to ease the scorching burn on her tongue. Lightning watched with a bemused grin.

"You should wait until it cools," she said.

"But I'm hungry now," Fang replied.

Light half smiled and shook her head. Fang turned toward the landscape, absorbed in thought again. Lightning regarded her curiously, pursing her lips as she swallowed.

"She's fine, Fang," she said.

Fang fixed her eyes on the horizon, "You don't know that."

"I've seen her fight," she replied, "She can handle herself. You give her too little credit."

"You don't know her like I do," Fang answered curtly.

That shut her up. It was true. Lightning knew little of Fang, less of Vanille and was only beginning to understand Pulse, to get beyond the phantom image Bodhum had painted of it. Light dropped her gaze to the ground. Curiosity stirred within her: about Vanille, about Fang. Who were they? Where'd they come from? Something electric burned between them, that much she understood. It fired a furnace of jealousy in her, knowing that Vanille knew Fang more than anyone; knowing that she, herself, knew nothing.

"They've been gone too long," Fang tossed her skewer into the fire.

"What if they went to look for us?" Lightning asked.

"Then they're still looking," she answered.

"We'll find them."

Fang paused a moment, "They'd be heading to Oerba. Vanille knows that's where I'd go."

"Then that's where we'll go." Light stood and extended her hand to Fang.

Fang took it and struggled to her feet, "What will we do with the rest of this meat?"

"Use it as bait," Light raised her hands over the fire and cast a water spell. The fire choked beneath the weight of it.

They packed up their weapons and retraced their steps toward the Steppe.

OOO

Fang froze at the mouth of the delta, where the path spilled into the central expanse. It was an endless abyss. The titan looked on overhead. Bloodthirsty Humbaba and Gorgonopsid packs patrolled the rolling hills. Zanitra surveyed the land from above, observing their prey. It was a death trap.

Lightning crossed her hands over her chest, "Stop it."

"What if they're in trouble out there?" Fang gestured toward the distance, "how would we ever know?"

"Vanille is an expert medic," Lightning's anger was at its edge, "Snow's an expert sentinel. Think about it. Do you really think they'd be so helpless? That if we were there it would make such a difference?"

"It would make a difference to me."

"How?"

"I would know for sure," Fang replied.

"You think I don't worry about that?" Lightning cut her a glare and considered her words before she continued. "Sometimes seeing isn't knowing. Do you think they're lost out there?"

Fang paused, hands on her hips, scanning the Steppe. Pulse had never been so alien. She tried to remember, to recall the rhythm of the land she was raised on, the life-force that fed and guided her. She shook her head, "No."

"We don't have time for doubt," Lightning approached her. Fang glanced at her face and found a softened expression. There was something in her blue eyes, something guarded. Sympathy? Concern? Ghost-like fingertips caressed Fang's hand. Sudden, sharp heat ate up through her wrist, up her arm into her chest. Light stared at her.

"C'mon," the soldier turned away and headed into the chaos.

Trembling, Fang dutifully followed.

The first few fights were routine: a few scrapes for their effort as they cleared a path. They'd forgotten the titan was watching, the displeasure it caused when they struck down one of his living creations and exerted their might, their will, over his. He was the arbiter of life and death in the Steppe, the artist of the land. All that existed belonged to him, was his to create and define or to destroy. Not since the last appearance of Orphan had the titan witnessed the blasphemy of human kind. He roared and the land violently shook. The two humans gathered close to one another. He cast a shroud of dust over them to obscure their sight. And from his right hand, a fleet of Humbaba poured into the valley.

Fang choked at the influx of smoke into her lungs. She cursed. Lightning seized her arm.

"I can't see anything," she coughed.

"Stay close to me," Fang replied. "Be ready to fight."

They wandered blindly, unable to see more than a few feet in front of them. Shadows knit from the fog directed their path and they avoided the hulking monsters that roamed around them, hunting them, catching their scent. They heard the mutants growling, tasted their breath, heard their steps. Fang squeezed Light's hand. A Gorgonopsid jumped at them from the curtain of the mist. In shock, they brutally cut it down and continued gingerly, feigning their bravery. It was then that they reached the edge of the cloud and the path narrowed with a cliff to the side of it. Two mountains formed a tunnel-like entrance into the next stretch of land, towering over them like the gatekeepers of their fate. They sighed in relief. At last, a way out.

The ground shook from a tyrannical roar; the breath of the beast gusted at their backs. They reached for their weapons as the Humbaba stood on its hind legs. In its hand a weapon formed: a sword with a spinning saw at the tip. Fang charged at the creature and wounded its leg. Enraged by the pain, it turned to Lightning and unleashed a burst of magic. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, shielding her eyes. Blindness. Daze. Poison. Curse. Petrify. The Humbaba raised its weapon and brought it down on her. Fang watched Lightning's body fly into the air and crash back down, bouncing upon impact; ragdoll limbs flailed and signalled to all witnesses that the life had gone out of her, that the body was an object, limp like a doll: unreal.

A feral rage seized Fang then, deep and buried in her DNA, saturated with the grief of helpless ancestors who watched their kin fall before them: bottom of the food chain. Its weapon was stuck in the dirt and she climbed its hand, ran up its arm and shoulder to its face where she ran the sharp end of her staff across its eyes. The thin membrane broke and from it a yellow pus poured down the beast's face. Blind. She lacerated the neck and severed the windpipe, watched it swell and compress and hang on the outside of the slashed throat, opening and closing, desperately searching for air that wouldn't come. She stabbed the collarbone and pulled her staff downward with her weight, carving a mammoth wound down the front of its chest, its gut, its bowls. With its flesh broken, the Humbaba poured onto the field in a wave of blood and meat, veins and fleshy tubes.

She dashed toward Lightning's body and gathered her up in her arms, ignoring the damage. She charged into the narrowed path, to the place between the mountains where they would be hidden from the titan's sight, from the sight of the other predators. Kneeling onto the ground, she gently deposited Lightning in front of her and rummaged in their supplies for a tuft of Phoenix Down and a vial of potion. Fang uncorked the vial and dissolved the down in the green liquid. She propped Light up in her arms, tipping the vial into the soldier's mouth. Lightning coughed, quivering as the Phoenix Down took hold in her veins and reawakened the dormant magic flowing through her. Pain came with consciousness. She screamed in agony.

Fang jerked from the sound, suddenly aware of the picture before her: several head wounds made the brain seep from every available orifice, nose, eyes, ears bleeding in streams down Lightning's alabaster face, her light pink hair stained with dark violet-crimson gashes. A twisted arm. A twisted leg. Fang cursed, frightened, barely able to concentrate above the howls of anguish.

"I'm sorry," Fang repeated under her breath, "I'm so sorry." She'd never learned any healing magic; Vanille was always there to provide it when it was needed.

She stroked Lightning's face and tried to console her, fumbling with her other hand for another potion. She poured it over Light's face, into the wounds, into her mouth, hoping it would take hold. She had an idea of how they worked, the potions, little nanomachines that dove into the bloodstream to correct mutated chains of DNA. Combined with the l'Cie blood, full of magical catalysts, the nanomachines raced to work, healing wounds in real time. The potion sizzled on the opened flesh and Lightning winced, her cries waning. Fang popped the cork from another vial and poured the potion on her, the flesh fizzing and sealing up, the blood washing away. Light's eyes were sealed shut. Fang caressed her cheek and leaned into her ear.

"Where's your dagger?"

"Back pocket," Lightning croaked.

She gingerly searched Lightning's jacket and removed the dagger, unfolding the blade. She held Light's face close to her own.

"I need you to be very still," Fang's voice was soft. "It might hurt but if you move, I'll hit your eye."

Lightning shivered.

She gripped the blade tightly and tilted Lightning's head forward, breath caught in her throat. Jaw clenched. The blade moved lethargically along Light's eyelid, severing the fleshy bond that the Humbaba's spell had formed. Blood streamed down her face anew. Fang wiped it with the excess fabric of her sari and poured a bit of potion on the open eye. Lightning blinked, able to see.

"That's one," Fang exhaled. Lightning's hand reached up and seized a fistful of the sari wrapped around Fang's chest. Fang readied the blade again and proceeded to remove the seal on the other eye. It tore and bled, and she washed it with a potion. "That's two."

Time turned into an abyss; everything stopped. They stared at each other, frozen. Lightning's hand still gripped a fistful of Fang's dress. Their breathing marked time. Fang brushed the damp hair from Lightning's forehead and swallowed. A familiar, shaded look lingered in Light's blue eyes and this time Fang could see what it was but did not want to see it. Instead, she sat silently, unnerved by it, smouldering in its scorching path. Light, still trembling, felt something in her chest swelling and spreading and hot; it stretched out across her ribs, across her stomach, up through her neck and into her cheeks. She shook harder as Fang bent her head toward her, as her nose brushed her cheek, as moist breath touched her ear.

"Don't do that to me again," Fang whispered.

Her composure cracked and tears welled in Lightning's eyes: fear and pain, relief and horror all swept up inside of her. Her chin trembled. Fang clutched her to her chest and burying her face in Fang's neck, a sob escaped Lightning's lips. It was the first time she'd tasted death as a l'Cie' the first time she'd truly tested that great mortal fear. They stayed there, curled up and vulnerable until both had calmed. Light cast white magic on her limbs until her strength was renewed. And flushed with embarrassment, she stood, hardened by anger at the shattered mess she'd become. But she kept it inside and extended her hand to Fang, fingers laced and lingering a little too long before they parted and continued on.


	2. Tempting Fate

Title: Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: Thus far it's T, for violence and language. So if you have virgin ears, fuck off. It promises to get sexier, so M in the coming chapters.

Author's Notes: I don't understand formatting on this site. As a result, it's a little messed up. I tried to space everything out though.

OOO

The scent of oil, urine and rot filled their nostrils. The air was thick and hard to breathe. The tang of metal settled onto their tongues, the taste of dirt; the darkness was punctured by torchlight strategically placed along the path. Ma'Habara Subterra: the mechanical cave. They'd been stuck in it for hours.

Fang coughed and cleared her throat, her breath was marked by strangled wheezing. She could hear Lightning retching a short distance from where she stood. She retrieved a potion from the pouch at her waist and took a sip. The cold liquid spread into her chest and cleared her lungs. Light returned visibly pale.

"Here," Fang held out the vial of potion and they started along the path again.

"Thanks," she removed the cork with a soft popping noise and drank.

"It's your l'Cie blood," Fang said. "Your body hasn't adjusted to it yet."

Lightning squeezed her eyes shut; the nausea was overwhelming. "Well it better adjust soon."

"It will take time. All of the things your body is made for: hunger, fatigue, expiration – none of them matter anymore. Being l'Cie is being immortal."

Light nodded and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. She gestured with the vial, "Provided you have plenty of these."

"Overcoming mortality is no small order. It's what that fal'Cie Primarch bugger's done. He doesn't eat, doesn't sleep and doesn't stop."

"If I don't need food or sleep, then why do I still get hungry? Or tired?" She gulped down another mouthful of potion.

"After a lifetime of eating and hunger, your brain has gotten used to the idea," Fang answered.

"I'm hungry because I think I'm hungry? That sounds insane."

"The mind plays powerful tricks," Fang removed another vial from her pouch and drank, chest tightening, "You die only if you think you're dead. Pain is the only thing left that's real. That's something even fal'Cie couldn't evolve out of."

Lightning's brow furrowed. "I don't know about that. What makes you so sure?"

"Five hundred years frozen in crystal is a lot of time to figure things out."

A trace of a smile appeared on Lightning's lips, "You're five hundred years old?"

"More I reckon," Fang replied, "But I spent about five hundred years in crystal stasis."

"What was that like?"

Fang shrugged, "I don't remember. I wish I did. I might remember my focus that way. Or at least Vanille's."

A fleet of Pulseworkers blocked their path. Fang was eager to fight them. The machines were quite simple, useless foes. She enjoyed their destruction; it forced her awake and kept her alert. Lightning used them to retrain her body, to regain the strength in her muscles she lost when the Humbaba attacked her. With each fight they became more flexible, less painful. Muscle stiffness was a side-effect of white magic.

A final burst of Light's Thundaga spell turned the Pulseworkers into heaps of scrap metal and wire. They sheathed their weapons. A sudden coughing fit seized Fang's body. She sucked in a breath and reached for another vial of potion. Taking a sip, she cursed under her breath. A cool, eucalyptus flavour enveloped her throat and spread through her chest. Lightning cleared her throat and swallowed hard, fending off her nausea. They continued their walk.

"We're running out of these," Fang frowned, sipping from the vial.

Lightning pursed her lips, desperate to take her mind off her illness, "How long have you known Vanille?"

Fang noticed the grimace on Lightning's face and handed her the potion. Light took it gratefully.

"All my life," Fang replied.

"You lived together in Oerba?" She passed the vial back to Fang.

"Yep," Fang nodded and took a drink.

"Any parents?"

"No," She shook her head and handed the vial back to Lightning. "No parents in Oerba. It was run like a giant orphanage for girls. There was a matron who ran everything. The older girls cooked and cleaned. Took care of us."

"Only girls?" Lightning arched her brow.

"Only girls," She smirked, "Men were a bit of a foreign creature there. We knew they existed. The fal'Cie temple at the centre of our village had a faculty of male-only priests. But they were haggard, mean old things. Nothing like what I discovered after invading your hometown."

Light sipped the potion, "The men must've been boys at some point."

"Obviously. But we had no idea where they were. We weren't allowed any contact outside of the village."

She frowned. "Why?"

The ground shook violently and Fang stepped in front of Lightning, using her body to shield her. From across the catwalk and beyond a winding metal staircase the giant creature moved, rolling through the cave's tunnels, crashing through the rocks and tunnelling anew. The bright orange teeth around it spun like a saw as it approached, stopping just short of where Fang and Lightning stood.

Light fell into Fang's body as though drunk, her nausea returning perforce. She moaned. The pain had increased. Fang steadied her, cupping her shoulders in order to keep her standing.

Lightning's head lolled back, "What the hell is that?"

Fang chuckled, tickled by _schadenfreude_, "It's an Atomos. It ploughs tunnels through the Ma'Habara caves. It's our way out of here."

Lightning blanched, "What?"

"I'm not going to lie to you," she said. "It's going to be hell with that headache of yours. You'll have to use your white magic."

"I still don't understand."

"Atomos is a vehicle," she replied. "A sentient machine, but a vehicle all the same. It goes through the Subterra and ends up in Sulya Springs."

Lightning looked heartbroken, "Let's get this over with."

They climbed the metal staircase and gingerly boarded Atomos. Inside were cast iron ledges they used for seats. Light tensed. The seats were unbearable. Fang closed the hatch and sat next to her, trapped inside the darkness. As the Atomos roared to life, Lightning gasped and put her hand on her stomach; the green-blue glow of a cure spell kept her nausea at bay. Fang saw the soft green illumination and reached for it, covering Lightning's hand with her own. The cure spells seeped into them both and eased their discomfort; the contact between their hands kept them calm.

OOO

The Springs were a welcome relief from the dark, dank carcass of the Atomos. Lightning was the first to struggle out, anxious to be free of the insidious machine. Fang emerged more slowly, unnaturally, as though something was holding her back. Light collapsed to her knees and bent over the spring water, using her hand as a cup. She could hear the Oerban behind her wracked by another hoarse coughing fit. She took an empty potion vial and filled it with water, corked the top and returned to her friend.

As she offered the vial to her, Fang removed the hand that covered her mouth. Blood laced between her fingers and collected at her palm; her lips were smeared with bright crimson. She heaved and opened her mouth wide, trying to inhale.

"I think we were breathing rust," Fang's voice couldn't breach a whisper. She slowly lowered her body to the ground, the weight of it suddenly intolerable.

Lightning eased her descent, searching the Pulsian's face for an answer. None came. Her fingertips glowed with the beginnings of a cure spell. She pulled down the sari collected at Fang's chest, unfastened the zipper of the black top beneath.

Fang wheezed, "What are you –"

She ran her index and middle fingers up the centre of Fang's chest, pressing hard into the bone and taut flesh. The green-blue glow filled Fang's chest, relief came with it.

"Tilt your head back," Light's voice was soft and velvet.

She obeyed and revealed her throat, Adam's apple, slight and feminine, unveiled itself. She swallowed and Light watched the strange little device move, trailed her fingers upward: past the collarbone, up the throat to the chin. She reached out with both hands, her thumbs glowing, and tilted Fang's head back until they were level and could see one another. Her thumbs ran across the space just beneath Fang's eyes, on either side of her nose and she pressed the cure into the skin, dragging her thumbs toward Fang's ears. Fang moistened her lips.

"Better?" Lightning cupped Fang's face.

Fang nodded, seduced by the calm of the moment. She could breathe. Everything was clear.

Lightning refused to move. A branch snapped behind her. A Centaurion. Fang spotted it over Lightning's shoulder. Light was abnormally oblivious.

"Lightning?" Fang's eyebrows arched.

"Yes?" Her cheeks were flushed, eyes heavy-lidded. Her pulse quickened.

"Move!" Fang demanded.

Her eyes widened, incredulous, "What?"

With one hand Fang shoved her out of the way, groping around for her staff. She reached it in time to swing it at the leaping Centaurion and stab it in the gut. White-grey gizzards oozed from the opening. The creature twitched as it gradually succumbed to death. She panted and straightened her back.

"You alright?" She asked.

Fang nodded.

They took a moment to absorb the environment, stared longingly at the clean pools of spring water, the waterfall off to the side. Their clothes and hands were stained with the entrails of their mutant foes; layers of new and old sweat caught dirt like the net of a spider's web.

"Wish we could wash our clothes," Fang remarked.

"We have nothing to wash them with," Light replied.

Fang shrugged, removing her sari and folding it at her feet. As she reached for the zipper at the back of her black top, Light's voice perked up.

"What are you doing?"

"Bathing," she replied and presented her forearms as evidence. "I'm covered in Humbaba shite."

A smile quirked at Lightning's lips, "I was wondering what that smell was."

Fang tossed her top to the side and pulled down her shorts, "Well, you don't smell like roses, Sunshine."

She bit her tongue and proceeded to undress, stealthily glanced in Fang's direction. Her body was tanned – brutish muscles mixed with feminine delicacy throughout her physique. It was quite alluring. Light licked her lips. Quite fascinating.

"Are you coming?" Fang stared at her perplexed.

"What?" She took a moment to understand the question; certain she hadn't heard it right. When its meaning sank in, Light nodded, her cheeks flushed. Clumsy fingers divested her and she leaped into the water, welcomed the cold.

They swam around for a while, a certain freedom born from nudity, all restraints removed. Lightning swam toward the waterfall and stood beneath it, stretching her arms up, straining her fingertips. The force of the water lifted the dirt from her flesh, relaxed the tension in her muscles. She ran her hands through her hair, nails digging through the grime and pulling it free until it was lost in the jet of water.

For a while, they kept to themselves, concentrated on the task at hand. Sideways glances passed between them, all coveted, each one eliding the other's attention, eyes scrutinizing. Light dove back into the spring and swam to her clothing on the ledge. She pulled herself out, rummaged in the pile of clothing for her jacket pockets. Fang floated over, narrowed and curious eyes watched the soldier. Lightning looked up and her alabaster skin pulled taught, tinted cherry-pink as she registered Fang's presence, her sharp stare.

Lightning removed a small bottle from her jacket and uncorked the top. She shook a few drops of liquid onto her palm and rubbed her hands together. Holding them out, apart from each other, she called to Fang.

"Come here."

Intrigued, the Pulsian climbed the ledge and sat on the rock next to her.

"Wachya got there?" Came the expectant, lilting drawl.

"Turn."

There was a playfulness in her expression. Fang bit her lip and obeyed. Fingers threaded through her damp, heavy locks, massaged her scalp. A floral aroma filled their nostrils. Fang grinned.

"Perfume?" She asked.

"I was going to trade it for Gil," Light said. "But we can put it to better use."

"You sure?" she asked. "Perfume's quite valuable." Her thoughts ran together, fingers stroked her scalp firmly, smoothed over and under her ears, touched the top of her jaw line and travelled to the back of her neck where thumbs kneaded the flesh.

"I'm sure." Light smirked, watched Fang struggle against the pleasure of her touch. Light's tongue darted out and moistened her bottom lip.

"Don't you want any?" She asked.

"What?" Light arched her brow.

"The perfume?" She gestured toward the vial.

"Right," Light nodded, swallowed hard.

Fang reached for the vial and coated her palms with it. She coaxed Lightning to turn. Her calloused hands ran through the fine silk of Lightning's hair; the tender strands fell between her fingers like sand through a sieve. Her fingertips traced a similar path as the ones that touched her moments before. She brushed back the soldier's bangs and collected her in a ponytail, worked the perfume through. She let the wet hair fall at Light's back and reached back up to run her fingertips over and under Lightning's ears, at her neck. A soft moan escaped Lightning's throat.

Fang rubbed her back with an open palm, "You alright?"

She recoiled from the touch, "Fine. We should get going."

Fang nodded in agreement.

They dressed quickly and in silence, sheathing their weapons, tying their supplies to their dress.

"Whereto, Fang?" Lightning inhaled comfortably, jacket zipped up as far as it would go.

"The tower," she replied.

Light merely nodded.

They walked shoulder to shoulder across the mossy platforms, brushed against each other on occasion.

"How's your head?" Fang asked.

"Headache's gone," Light said, a faint smile on her lips. "And your chest?"

"Clear." Fang flashed her a sideways grin. Light faltered and looked away.

"Good," she said, her voice wavering. "If one of us gets sick, it will only slow us down."

Her steps picked up speed and she wandered ahead of the Pulsian.

"Right," Fang said, her voice crestfallen. But there was no one to hear it. Lightning was already too far ahead and showed no sign that she would stop.

OOO

Night was upon them, brought with it a new fleet of nocturnal enemies, each more mutant than the last. She swayed atop Bahamut's back, the wind lifting the tips of her strawberry blonde hair and brushing it from her face. Light looked down at the woman curled up in her arms; she rubbed the bare, tanned stomach, transmitted a cure. Fang winced at the initial touch and relaxed as the magic eased her pain. The new scratches on Fang's brow sealed and became smooth. Light stroked the Oerban's face. The last fight left Fang with a gash on her forehead.

"So you never finished your story," she said.

"Hmm?"

"About Oerba," she replied. "You were telling me about Oerba."

Fang pursed her lips and nodded, "Where were we?"

"You weren't allowed to leave the village."

"That's right," she said, "We were kept inside of it and we'd visit the temple every week."

"Why did they keep you there?"

"I think they wanted to keep us stupid," Fang said, an edge in her tone, "Keep us from discovering a world beyond our own. Oerba wasn't just a town, it was a world within itself. A way of thinking."

"Why keep the boys separated from the girls?"

"Worth," she replied. "Men would grow up to be priests. Or Pulsian terrorists sent to Bodhum or Palumpolum, places like that. All in service of the Pulse fal'Cie and his word. The word of the Maker."

Lightning's thumb stroked the Oerban's cheek, "What about the women?"

Fang pursed her lips and swallowed, muted anger in her eyes. Light's brow furrowed. She'd hit something.

"All the girls in Oerba had a... somewhat similar look to them," she began. "The matron, the cook, the maid were always pregnant. Newborn girls arrived pretty regular. But we couldn't have all belonged to the matron, or the cook, or the maid. There had to be others."

Light grimaced, "Are you and Vanille sisters?"

Fang averted her eyes, "I don't know." Her voice trailed off. Light frowned, unsure if she wanted to hear anymore.

"Usually, when a girl reached about ten, they were sent to the fal'Cie and sacrificed. That was our primary purpose."

She drew back in horror, "You were raised to be sacrifices?"

Fang nodded slowly, "From sacrifice and misery, the Maker will return to earth. At least, that's what the good book says. I don't think all the women were killed though. I reckon some were used for something different."

"How do you figure?" Light asked.

"When Vanille was nine and I was fifteen, we snuck into the fal'Cie temple under the pretence that we wanted to serve the Maker. I'd always been deceptively pious. I hated it: the fal'Cie. I knew it was hurting my family, my village. I knew it would hurt Vanille within the coming year."

"How did you make it to fifteen if girls were sacrificed at ten?"

"Some girls made it to their early teens before they were sent away from Oerba. I think they needed them to produce the children the fal'Cie used. I'm betting I was chosen for that, only they never got the chance to send me away."

Light's chest ached. Her fingertips sought out Fang's hand and they locked together.

"When we were in the temple, they were going to sacrifice Vanille right there. I knew they were. I wanted to destroy the fal'Cie. I screamed at it to get it angry, committed all kinds of blasphemy." Fang smiled faintly. "The priests were beside themselves in shock. They were about to kill me when Vanille threw herself in front of me. Seeing how bold we were... must've impressed that fal'Cie bastard because he marked us both, turned us into l'Cie and wiped out all the priests. I remember the ground shaking, Vanille holding onto me. Some sort of shockwave hit.

The temple vanished. The fal'Cie disappeared. If we'd been given a Focus we had no idea what it was, or how horrible it would become. When we went back to the village, everyone was gone. Vaporized. Like they'd never been there."

"I'm sorry," Light whispered.

"Don't be," Fang replied, looking up at her, scanning her face for signs of disgust. There was none.

"I lost my family too," she said, "My mother and father died when me and Serah were both young. And now with Serah gone... "

"You'll get her back," Fang's voice was quiet but resolute. "I'm living proof of that. She's alive."

"I know." Stubborn tears welled in her eyes but would not fall. Fang struggled to sit upright. Light propped her up beside her.

"Does it still hurt?" Light asked.

"No," Fang shook her head.

They watched the stretch of land in the distance, nocturnal creatures warring over territory and prey. The wind whispered past them, calmness in the calamity of the night. Pulse was always so alive, always dangerous yet somehow wonderful, a balance: chaos and peace, love and hate, need and satisfaction, life and death. Fang sighed.

"We've had to deal with so much shit."

Light leaned back in her seat, "I know."

"At least when I'm with you, the shit goes away." She smirked, her signature expression.

Lightning chuckled softly and nodded in agreement. She leaned her head on Fang's shoulder and relaxed into her. An arm wrapped round her and pulled her close. The warmth of their bodies coaxed them into slumber.

OOO

They reached Taejin's Tower as dawn approached. There was an eerie quality to the air as they stepped from Bahamut's back to the pebbled ground. A mist covered the cliffs and clouded the tower; grey light cast the sky in semi-darkness. Lightning's skin crawled; Fang scanned the fog with suspicion. They were trespassing on a path laid by something else, already come and gone away. Or waiting and watching them in secret. It was certain that they were not alone.

Light shot Fang a distressed look.

"Yeah," Fang nodded, "I don't like this anymore than you do."

Light was the first to enter; she gripped the handle of her gunblade. Fang had her staff out of its holster, prone for an attack. The tower was as monstrous inside as it was from the exterior. Sapphire flames lit the torches and drowned the room in indigo. There were mutated Gorgonopsid carcasses on the floor, bellies gutted by long, precise cuts and random puncture marks. In the distance something creaked, a metal clap from a few floors up echoed through the chamber, stone debris fell from the ceiling in pebbles and dust.

A machine started, rumbled from above and a chime played as a large structure descended along a glowing green track. It stopped at the mouth of the platform in front of them; a hatch opened at the side. They approached it wearily, unnerved by the emptiness of the place, the portraits of death on the floor. Fang found the lever and pulled it back. The hatches closed and the metal cage rumbled, knocking them to the ground. The chime played as they ascended up the tower.

Lightning was livid, "Do you always mess with things you have no idea how to control?"

"Of course!" Fang yelled over the noise of the elevator.

"And if it kills you by accident?" Light anchored herself on the wall.

"Then I die trying!"

The elevator grinded to a halt and heaved. They crashed to the floor. The hatches opened. Light mumbled something about a smartass. Fang crawled out and stumbled to her feet, brushing the dust from her dress. They were on the roof.

The sky was a bit clearer though gray and empty. Mutant animal carcasses littered the ground: a pack of Gorgonopsid, a few Zanitra. The marks on them were different: the flesh was hideously torn, chewed and scratched away from the bones. Guts were strewn about beside them, as though they'd been ripped from the wounds and tossed about. Something was terribly wrong.

She swallowed, "Who did this?"

Fang shook her head, "I think the question is: _what_ did this?"

A feral shriek tore through the blank sky. Their eyes narrowed. From a distant black dot emerged a black cloud, spreading out along the horizon.

Fang sighed, readied her weapon, "And there's the bullshit."

Light removed her sword.

The black cloud continued to widen, approached them with pace. It was then that they each spotted it: black wings flapping all in unison, all frenzied and reckless. The shriek returned and morphed from the single voice into the hundreds of tiny little cries, hoarse little Chonchon throats and tiny poisonous fangs. Lightning cast Thundaga at the massive fleet and pushed Fang forward.

"Run!"

The Chonchons dove down with a sharp spin, hunting the perceived leader –Fang – at the head of the group. Fang and Lightning ran furiously, cast magic in their wake to buy themselves time. The Chonchons leapt across the sky. The women charged across the platform and came to a wall of debris. Without any time to think, they began the climb, Lightning first, up the large blocks of marble and stone, twisted with wire and rubble. Light clawed at the ground, hauled her body over the obstacles. She could see a small opening between the collapsed stones, a place where they'd be safe.

At the top of the wall she turned, held out her hand for Fang to grasp it. She looked to the west. The Chonchons were dangerously close. She cursed. What was taking so long?

"My foot is stuck!" The Oerban shouted, head turning to gauge the distance of the enemy.

Lightning screamed, "Fang!"

It was altogether too late. The black cloud of Cie'th bats crashed against Fang's body: talons pulled the flesh from her limbs, from her face. They latched onto her and ripped her away from the debris, suspended her over the mouth of the platform. Lightning watched in horror. Fang was already dead, her face and body a crimson mess of shredded skin and blood. The bats let the corpse go and Fang's body fell back through the opening in the tower.

Light threw her Eidolon crystal onto the platform. From the portal, Odin emerged and she leapt from the wall to land on his back. She urged him forward and they plunged through the mouth of the tower, racing against Fang's plummeting body. Odin was able to arch beneath her just before the ground floor. Light caught her, clutched her to her chest. Fang's blood stained her fingers and clothes. They ascended rapidly, back up through the platform and toward the wall of debris. The Chonchons were waiting. They spotted them, carved the air in their flight path and switched direction.

The way out was close. The Chonchons paralyzed Odin with a surge of Pain. The spell left him in a daze and he hovered in the air, made them vulnerable. Lightning screamed at him, kicked him with her heels. He pressed further, lethargic from the hex. Something bit him. He reared and they pitched toward the concrete platform in a tailspin. Light hit the ground with force and lost her grip on Fang's body.

She opened her eyes steadily, warm liquid streaming down her face, down her chin. Fang was just out of reach. Odin was trapped by the Chonchon army; they devoured him piece by piece. She spat a gob of blood onto the ground, hopelessly tried to pull her body forward to no avail. Her strength drained quickly. She lowered her head onto the cold concrete, sobbed in frustration and pain. In one final attempt, she stretched her arm out, fingertips trembling, desperate to reach her friend. But her hand fell; tears streamed from her eyes. And her laboured breathing slowed until her body too, was still and silent.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Epiphany

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually for chapter 13. So finish the game or be spoiled. The cie'th stones can wait. Seriously. I've tried them. A level is completely nuts.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: It's finally M. Sexy things happen, bad words, violence. But mostly sexy things.

Author's Notes: My, my fanfiction readers, what big FEEDBACKS you have :P Interesting lot of comments coming from my readers and I'd like to address the issues:

All my stories are violent and painful. Trauma = drama. And I know you love the drama. Happy ending? Stick around and find out.

I'm not exactly going with canon FFXIII facts. Yes, I've played the game (and beat it, woo!). Still, creative license and all that. As far as I'm concerned: Fang is 5 years older than Vanille. She certainly looks 5 years older. But more than that: Oerba is a very, very messed up place. Muwahaha *wrings hands together*

I often critique religion. I'll do it stealthily so unless you dwell on it you'll miss it. But if it offends you... meh. Stop reading?

My grammar and punctuation are probably arse, certain segments might make no sense at all. I have NO beta-reader. If anyone knows where I can find one for FFXIII fics, lemme know please!

OOO

The world flashed, a peculiar feeling, as though everything was engulfed in a strobe-light, her mind blinking and unblinking, the images before her eyes appearing and disappearing, her eyelids motionless. It was both an ethereal and sinister place, unreal, beyond comprehension. She moved her limbs and her fingertips to test them. Holding her hand in front of her face, the limb left a phantom tail behind it, a ghost of vapour that rapidly dissolved. She tried to speak but had no voice. She was empty, hollowed out.

The world – a blank space in which she saw herself, in which physics oozed and bled into lilting delirium and nonsense –had no walls, no hard matter. Her hands shot out, fingertips searched for something solid. The hands danced in the darkness along the empty air, leaving ghost trails in their wake. She continued to stagger forward. There had to be something somewhere. Something whole.

"Claire!"

Serah's voice rang out from the distance. Light craned her neck, searched for the source.

"Serah!"

"Over here, Claire."

She was in front of her, lost in the darkness and the distance. Lightning jogged forward into the endless shadow, her hands still out in front, still searching for something concrete. A door creaked open behind her. She spun in the direction of the sound. Serah stood in the doorframe.

"C'mere, Claire." Her voice was further away than before.

A wave of dread overwhelmed her then, its origin unclear. Light pushed it away and bounded toward her sister, drunk with determination and urgency. Her sister was alive. The distance between them stretched infinitely, and though she felt she was distinctly moving, she stepped no closer to the doorframe.

Serah screamed. Two dark figures appeared in the door behind her.

"Claire, help!"

Lightning ran faster, fire racing through her chest into her cheeks.

From the abyss, a woman moved, weapon in hand. She forced Serah out of the way. The first shadow-figure, taller than the other, turned to run and the woman cut her down. The body collapsed in a heap. The other figure retreated in fear but the woman was prepared. She fired three shots from the gunblade and the culprit tipped to the side as it slumped to the floor. Light stood frozen, watching the scene unfold.

A spotlight appeared around the doorframe, around the bodies, circular and warm. Suddenly, Light's vision was clear, the world around her steady and holding. Her sister stood just inside the door and the woman, in a Guardian Corps uniform, a mirror image of Lightning stood beside her. On the floor were the bloodied bodies of Fang and Vanille.

"No!" Light screamed but she heard only silence. Her voice was lost.

"Damn Pulse l'Cie," the Lightning apparition said.

"They're monsters, Claire," Serah added, "All monsters."

Lightning's ghost discharged a round of bullets into the dead bodies, mutilated them.

"They're the reason you became l'Cie," the soldier said.

"How could you, Claire?" Serah wailed, tears in her eyes, "How could you do it?"

The soldier narrowed her eyes at Lightning's, a burning rage in the icy-blue stare.

"I hate you."

Her voice echoed back to her, but it was her own lips that moved, her own voice that said it. Light reached for her weapon and the gunblade unfolded. She charged her reflection, the blade out in front to strike her down. It sunk into the phantom's gut; the ghost staggered back, streams of blood running down her stomach and legs. Light reached out for Serah but her hand passed through. Her sister recoiled from the touch.

"All you ever do is destroy yourself," she said, and from behind her, Serah produced a pistol, raised it to Lightning's head and cocked the gun.

"What are you doing?" Light's eyes were wide with terror.

Serah's voice was resolute and remorseless, "Saving you."

She jerked awake, the echo of the gunshot ringing in her ears. Her vision swam, her chest was sore. Awareness crept in and the world around her sharpened: it was daylight – maybe morning – and warm. Lightning's eyes opened and scanned the space: a pastel coloured bedroom covered in dust, knickknacks: the contents of a child's bedroom. Her body ached and elicited a whimper from her throat. Where was she? What was that dream?

Something moved beneath her ribcage. With effort, she managed to lift her head and turn, gasped at the sight. Fang slumbered beneath her. Her brow furrowed. She remembered nothing. And then the image of Fang's corpse flooded back to her, the inhuman waxen flesh of her mutilated face. Superficial scars stretched along the Pulsian's jaw and cheeks, along her brow.

There was a blanket over them, sealing the heat between them, both stripped to their undergarments. Light grimaced as she surveyed the body beneath her. Even asleep, Fang's body was alert, coiled, muscles tense. She was unusually well defined and yet unmistakably feminine; heavy breasts heaved with each breath, long raven hair fanned out on the pillow. Her careful fingers trailed over Fang's cheek, traced feather-light across her bottom lip. They wandered over the collarbone, felt the pucker of a sealed gash along her shoulder. The smooth skin fascinated her, its olive-tan tint bordered on the exotic. She traced a return path back up her neck. Green-blue eyes met hers. Lightning froze.

Long eyelashes hooded the Oerban's lethargic gaze; Lightning's body was taut. Fang winced as consciousness seeped in. Her muscles were stiff, sore from the magic used to piece her back together. Her throat was parched and she swallowed; it scraped her throat as though she was drinking crushed glass. She winced as Light began to move. Her hands reached up and landed on the smoothness of the soldier's back. Her breath caught; she registered how little they were wearing. Her gaze returned to Lightning; her distress was evident. She grinned, kept her hands on Light's back, knowing that the soldier would leave the moment she removed them. Light's face had flushed crimson. Fang rubbed her warm skin with the back of her thumb, tried to impart a level of comfort.

"Hi," Fang whispered, unable to manage anything more.

Lightning held her gaze for a moment, searched her face. Her expression softened but her body remained rigid, "Good morning, Sunshine."

Fang managed a hoarse chuckle. Her voice wavered, fell in and out of a whisper, "How long were you saving that one up?"

Lightning merely grinned, a lock of hair falling over her eyes.

"What happened?" She asked, looking about for the first time.

"We had an accident," Light replied. She followed Fang's stare, scanned the shelves for answers.

Fang gasped, jolted slightly. Lightning seized her chance and rose from the bed.

"What is it, Fang?" She asked, unnerved by her half-nakedness.

She sat up in the bed with effort, head whipped right and left as she took in the room. "This is my bedroom!"

Light's eyebrow arched, "What?"

"This is my bedroom," she repeated. "Mine and Vanille's. We're in Oerba."

The sudden thundering of footsteps caught their attention; someone ascended the staircase at pace. Light's eyes whirled around the room, searched for a weapon in vain. She balled her hands into fists, her position prone for an attack. From the corner of the doorframe, a young woman appeared. She gasped as she scrutinized them both quickly, but her eyes halted upon Fang. A grin spread across her youthful face and she rushed toward the bed.

"Vanille!" Fang beamed as the young girl crashed into her, clutched her to her chest.

"Oh God," she whispered, liquid glassed her eyes, "I thought –when you didn't wake up, I thought..."

Fang put a finger to the young girl's lips, silencing her, "I'm fine."

"I've missed you," she said, her arms wrapping around Fang's neck.

"I've missed you too." Warm lips brushed against hers, long and tender. They broke apart to breathe. Vanille's lips were parted, reddened from the kiss; her bright young eyes held Fang in them. Mad with love. Fang's chest ached to watch her. Her hand snaked up to the back of Vanille's head and pulled her close, crushed her lips in a bruising kiss.

Lightning tensed at the silence behind her, she'd long since turned around. If she'd found her clothing, she'd have left. Instead she was stuck; eyes ambling along the shelves of curios, the bunk-beds in the wall that once caged a half-dozen children. All sacrifices. She ran a hand through her hair, pushed the thought away. That's when her eyes fell upon it: a small toy gun in a holster, sitting among a mess of children's' playthings.

It brought back the dream, her sister. What could it have meant? She remembered the image of herself in uniform, the sight of Fang and Vanille's butchered corpses. She'd done that, she'd killed them. Pulse l'Cie, all monsters, monsters. She used to slaughter them without thought: they were all terrorists, all enemies, all evil. Guilt – was that it? But the two Pulsians were noble and human, friends. Vanille was a loyal, loving young girl. And Fang was... Fang was...

She ran her tongue along her bottom lips, unable to dwell on the thought for long without complete unease. How she'd come to care for the fate of Pulse l'Cie was beyond her. She'd forgotten the importance of what Fang told her: that the Pulsians were responsible for her sister's brand, the root of her misery and frustration. _How could you, Claire, how could you do it? _She should hate them, deceive them, kill them, keep it all from ever happening again as she was trained to do on Cocoon. And yet... The sound of Vanille giggling made her turn. Fang smiled, delighted to behold the young beauty in front of her. Light could see then how much Fang truly loved Vanille. And yet...

"Lightning!" the young girl said, as though noticing her for the first time. "Are you cold?"

Light shook her head; a shiver ran through her. Vanille put her hands on her hips, narrowed her eyes. She sighed and lead the soldier to the dresser, drew out a drawer filled with her uniform. A sweet smile spread across her face, the signature of her persona.

"Thank you," Light said.

Vanille's cheeks flushed under the weight of Lightning's gaze. She nodded and turned away as the soldier dressed, suddenly shy.

"The others are downstairs," she said over her shoulder. "There's food too if you're hungry."

Light nodded. "I'll see you two later."

And with that she disappeared from the room, glad to be free of them. Her discomfort had been clouded by something more violent, something she dared not acknowledge for fear of giving it strength.

She padded into the kitchen and the crowd of them: Hope, Sazh and Snow, began to cheer.

"Lightning!" Hope clapped.

"She's alive," Snow said, drawing out the last word.

Light screwed up her expression to hide the emergent smile. "It's good to be back."

Splayed on the plastic table was an assortment of food from Cocoon: chips, dried fruit and jerky, popcorn, sugar crackers, almonds and candy. Small packets of juice. Light reached for a sachet of chips and opened it, popping one into her mouth. The salty taste hummed on her tongue, sent a cascade of sensations to work and suddenly she was hungry. She considered what Fang had told her, that it was all unreal. But she couldn't get past the ache in the pit of her stomach, or how good the food was as it touched her pallet. She ate another chip.

"We thought you two were goners," Hope said, gnawing on a piece of liquorish.

"We heard you screaming and all the commotion," Sazh added. "You guys were right behind us."

"When we found you, you both looked really bad," said Snow, scratching the back of his neck.

"Especially Fang," Hope said.

Light winced at that.

"Looked so bad, Vanille could barely cast her magic properly," Sazh took the chocobo chick from his head and patted it, took comfort in its softness. "Took a few tries for Raise to work."

"But it worked," Snow said, "And that's what matters."

"Is Fang awake?" Hope asked.

Lightning nodded.

He headed for the stairs and she called after him, "Don't."

He ceased abruptly on the stairs, almost violently, a hurt expression on his face. Lightning softened her tone, "We should wait until Vanille comes down. Give them some time together." Hope slowly descended the stairs, glancing from the floor to the landing up the staircase. The second-floor bedroom took on a mystique, hid something he wasn't permitted to see.

"Why did you leave the camp in the first place?" Lightning's voice was harsher than she meant it to be.

"Long story," Sazh said, "Lotta mix-ups. We all got into some trouble around the edge of the camp; Hope and Vanille had found a King Behemoth."

"And it attacked you." Light said.

"Naturally," Snow replied. "Took all four of us to kill it, and even then it was... difficult."

"We came back to the camp in shock," Sazh continued. "None of us were thinking clearly, all hopped up on magic and potions. When we saw that you still hadn't come back, we thought it was best to go out and find you."

"Which turned out to be a disaster," Snow said and reached for a bit of beef jerky on the table.

"Vanille was the one who suggested Oerba," Hope said. "She said that's where Fang would be."

A wistful smile found her lips, "Fang said the same thing about Vanille."

"Well, it saved you," Snow replied, "We'd have never found you in that Steppe if you hadn't headed here first."

She nodded. A sudden blast of vertigo hit her then. She tottered to the side and forced a recovery. Her head spun, nausea started quickly and threatened at her throat. She anchored herself on the edge of the table, clamped hands keeping her on her feet.

"You're looking a little green, sis," Snow said. His voice was slurred and distant.

"Light?" Hope's voice was faded.

Her strength collapsed and her head bounced on the table en route to the floor.

OOO

Slowly dragged from the haze, back into consciousness, Light felt something soft on her belly. Hands. Someone's hands were touching her, gently prodding her skin. A cool flavour hinted at the back of her throat. Cure spells. She opened her eyes.

Oblivious to her attentiveness, the healer continued her work; glowing fingertips sent calming, therapeutic magic into Light's body. Her fingers brushed a sore rib, elicited a soft moan from her throat. She looked up. Fang held her gaze, a warm smile on her lips. She leaned in next to her on the pillow. With her head propped up in her hand, she brushed the fair locks from Lightning's eyes.

"Hey," Fang purred. Her voice was honey: smooth, sweet and thick.

"Hi," Light answered.

"How do you feel?"

"A lot better than when I smashed my head on the table," Light replied, her gaze unwavering.

"You've been making a habit of these accidents," Fang said, her fingers glowing anew, "I don't approve of your new hobby."

She leaned back and massaged her fingers into Light's temples. The ecstasy of the Cure spell pulled Light's eyes closed, parted her lips. Fang watched unabashedly, admired her pale complexion, her rose-tinted cheeks and lips, the angel-dust eyebrows. Fang warred to stop herself from leaning forward, from claiming those lips for herself.

Lightning opened her eyes, cast a half-hooded stare at the Pulsian. She too glanced at her peculiarly, eyes heavy and loaded with all things unspeakable. Deafened by the silence, Light broke first.

"When did you learn?" She gestured with her head toward Fang's hands.

"Hmm?"

"The Cure," Light said, spellbound.

"Oh," at last Fang looked away from her and down to her work. "Bout twenty minutes ago."

"That all?"

"Yeah," she said, "Vanille taught me."

Light's gaze dropped. She moved to get up and groaned from the pain. Her muscles had locked. Fang eased her back onto the pillow.

"Where is everyone?" Lightning asked as she settled.

"Out hunting," she replied. "All that junk they were eating was making them sick."

"You don't know any spells for curing white magic side effects, do you?"

Fang shook her head, "No. But there is one way to ease it a bit."

"What's that?"

"A massage."

Lightning froze. Fang chuckled.

"I didn't think you'd be too keen," she drawled.

Light paused a moment as she decided. She took the challenge. "I guess it depends who's doing it." Her eyebrow arched, a hint of a smirk appeared on her face.

Fang crossed her arms over her chest, "That so?"

"Who's better: you or Vanille?"

"I reckon I'm better," Fang stood up from the bed.

"That so?" Light mimicked her accent.

Fang cupped Lightning's shoulders and coaxed her to turn until she was flipped onto her stomach. The Pulsian ripped the blanket back and Lightning shivered. She wore her skirt and a short tank top, nothing more. She felt a depression on the bed as Fang joined her on the thin pallet; her body tensed the instant the woman's sari touched her back. Fang straddled her waist but did not rest there; instead she stayed up on her knees. Light heard the crackling wave of flames behind her. Fang cast fire to warm her hands.

She started at her waist, just above the elastic of her miniskirt. Lightning gasped as her fingers curled around the curve of her body; her thumbs pressed into the thick chorded muscles and trailed a path upward. The soldier's ribs rippled beneath her fingers, and she paused there, worked her fingers over them tenderly. A moan caught Fang's attention, made her smile. Her thumbs traced a return path, back to the waistband of her skirt. Fang pursed her lips and paused.

She slipped her hands just under the hem of Lightning's tank top. Waited for a reaction. None came. Her thumbs inched further up, fingers still wrapped around her waist. Lightning's body coiled once more.

"Are you okay?" Fang asked, her voice low.

"Yes," she whispered, tried to find her voice in vain.

Fang brought her hands back to the waistband of her skirt and then plunged higher up Lightning's back, stopped at her ribcage. A soft moan tore from the soldier's lips. Light's eyes slipped closed, her hands gathered a hunk of the pillow in a fist. Her lips parted. Fang massaged a reverse path, back down to her waist and thrust up again. This time, her thumbs outlined the soldier's shoulder blades and her fingers, splayed across the skin, just touched the undersides of Lightning's breasts. Fang's pulse lodged in her throat; her breathing was heavy.

She pulled her hands back down and removed them from Lightning's shirt, rested them in her lap. Her own lips had parted, her tanned cheeks were flushed. Light twisted in the bed as she registered the absence, turned around to lie on her back. The Oerban still straddled her hips. Their eyes met. Fang leaned down, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. Lightning closed her eyes and trembled with anticipation.

Footsteps came crashing up the stairs and the two women flew apart. Fang leapt from the bed and brushed the wrinkles from her dress. Lightning winced as she reached for the blanket and Fang tossed it toward her. She sat at the foot of the bed. Hope and Vanille turned the corner.

"Light, you're awake," Hope said.

"Yeah," she said, feigned a smile, "I feel a lot better."

Vanille went immediately to Fang and tucked the thin dark braid behind the Pulsian's ear.

"What did you catch?" Fang asked as the girl wrapped her arms around Fang's neck.

"Venison," Vanille answered. "Hope got the first one."

The boy beamed full of pride, betrayed his modesty, "Naw, it was total luck."

Vanille eyed him coyly, "No, you're quite good at it."

He blushed. "Um, how many steaks do you two want?"

"Just one for me," Fang replied. "And you too Vanille?"

She nodded.

"Lightning?" Hope asked.

The soldier was picking at the threads in the blanket. "Hmm?"

"Can we get you some dinner?" Vanille asked, her voice bright as always.

"I'm not very hungry," she replied. "Maybe later?"

Hope nodded in agreement, "You need rest."

"I'm going to go help out Snow with the grill," Hope said, "Feel better, Light."

As Hope headed down the staircase, Vanille followed at his heels. She paused at the doorframe, "You coming, Fang?"

Fang stole a glance at Lightning, held the soldier's gaze for a moment. "Yeah, I'm coming."

She waited for Vanille to look away before she reached for Lightning's hand and squeezed it, offered her some measure of reassurance. The soldier responded with a weak smile.

"You sure you're okay, Light?" Vanille asked, peering over the side of the doorframe.

"I'm fine, Vanille," she replied. Sensing harshness in her tone, she amended it, "Thank you."

"Okay," the redhead answered.

Fang disappeared with her down the staircase, their voices floating up to the bedroom in a muffled haze. What was happening to her? How fragile she'd become. She bit her lip, hard enough to draw blood. Everything was slipping. Nausea overwhelmed her as the voice inside her spoke, ridiculed her, accused her of weakness. She should have killed Fang on Palumpolum.

OOO

Day metamorphosed into night. They were gathered around the kitchen table in the house next door to Fang and Vanille's place; it was the house where the men slept. Dinner left them in a state of sloth. It was more food than they'd had in a fortnight and more substantial than their usual menu of potato chips and jerky. Lightning joined them, lured by the scent of the venison steaks on the grill Snow had made. As she finished the last of her steak, Sazh rummaged about behind the old, dilapidated refrigerator. The chocobo chick waddled around the table, ducking in between Snow and Hope's card game. Fang and Vanille shared a chair; Vanille sat in the older Pulsian's lap.

"Brilliant dinner, Snow," Fang said, flicked her tongue at her teeth.

"You're welcome," he said jovially. He was fixated on his hand of cards.

"And thanks to Hope for catching it," Vanille teased, knowing the how sensitive he was. He blushed and she giggled.

"You're horrible," Fang whispered in her ear. Vanille silenced her with a finger pressed to her lips.

"Can I interest any of you ladies in a game of Triple Triad?" Snow asked, scanning the room.

"No thanks," Fang said. "That venison has dampened my ability to think. Or move."

"I'd rather just watch," Vanille added.

Lightning frowned as she watched the old man, "Sazh, what are you doing?"

He had a cup in his hand and held it preciously, bringing it to her attention with a large, toothy grin. "It worked!"

Light stared at the murky liquid, "What did?"

"Homemade wine!" Sazh took a sip, grimaced as the fiery, sour liquid burned down his throat and flamed in his gut. "It's good."

Lightning recoiled, "I'm afraid to know what's in it."

"When did you make that?" Fang frowned.

"I've had this brewing for a week," Sazh replied.

"A week?" Lightning said, shared a perplexed look with Fang.

"How long have we been here?" The raven-haired woman asked.

"Almost two weeks," came the quiet reply from the girl in her lap.

"We were asleep for that long?" Light asked.

Hope nodded. A frown appeared on Vanille's face. Memories she thought long resolved caught her off guard; she cauterized them with the warmth of Fang's body, the scent of the woman's hair, the memory of the taste and feel of her kiss. Fang rubbed the back of the Vanille's neck until she calmed. The girl kissed her cheek.

"Can I interest you in some of Sazh's Miracle Swish?" Sazh asked.

"You can if you don't call it that," Lightning replied.

"Everybody's a critic," he sighed, rolling his eyes.

"One for me," Snow said.

"And me," Fang added.

"Me four," Vanille raised her hand.

"Alright, alright, don't get your panties in knots," Sazh said. He filled the line of plastic cups from the tap he build behind the fridge. Hope watched the cups of wine pass around him with indignation.

"I'll have one," he said.

"No," Lightning said curtly, "You're still too young."

"Light, I've fought with you," he began, "in the most violent fights I've ever had in my life. I've been fighting for my life since I was first branded l'Cie. How is that somehow less childish than indulging in what little fun I can get out of Swish?"

Snow rearranged his cards and nodded, eyebrows arched, "Ya know, he's got a point."

Light smiled, a sense of possessive pride came over her, "Yes, he does."

Hope beamed, "So... I can have some wine?"

"No," Lightning said flatly.

"Goddamit!" The boy exclaimed, slamming his cards onto the table. "I'm not a child!"

"Don't worry," Snow assured him, "I'll give you some of mine."

"No you won't," Light retorted, cut him a glare.

"Okay, I won't," he said simply and winked at Hope. He rose from the kitchen with his cards protectively tucked into his breast pocket, obtained a cup and a packet of juice from their supplies. He poured the boy a drink.

"Better?" He glanced back at Lightning.

"Much," she said simply, and turned away.

Playfulness crept into Snow's expression; he eyed Hope. Hope watched him with fascination. Placing a hand atop his and Hope's drinks, he switched the cups. Hope tried to conceal his glee.

"Shall we propose a toast?" Fang asked, swirling the liquid in her glass.

"To what?" Vanille asked.

Snow went first, "To Serah." He raised his glass.

"To Dajh," Sazh added, mimicking the gesture.

"To getting drunk?" Hope raised his cup and they chuckled.

"To friends," Vanille said.

Fang dodged Lightning's gaze, "To family." She raised her drink. Vanille kissed her forehead.

Lightning was at a loss. Awkward moments passed in silence.

"C'mon, sis, we're waiting on ya."

At last she had something safe to add, "To our success and to saving the world."

"Cheers!" Fang said, and their glasses collected in the centre, rims clicking together before they brought the drinks to their lips.

They all grimaced as the wine slithered and burned down their throats. Hope choked on the severe taste.

"Is he okay?" Light asked.

Snow patted him on the back, "Oh yeah, he's fine. Drink went down the wrong pipe... or something."

Hope nodded through the frantic movement, his cheeks turning deep red.

"Gah, Sazh," Fang grimaced, "It's awful!"

"Yeah," Sazh smiled, "But it'll get ya some drunk!"

Vanille eyed her cup wearily; Fang shrugged and continued to drink. Lightning too, was unfazed by the prospect of the muddy liquid. As the wine settled into the pit of her stomach, the tension in her muscles abated. She cleared her dirty dishes from the kitchen table and took a spot between Snow and Hope. They both looked up at her petrified, each certain that Lightning had discovered their scheme. But she merely reached for the deck of cards and began to shuffle them anew.

"Deal me in," she said simply.

Snow eyed the cards with renewed passion, "This should be interesting."

An hour passed in the competition. Lightning grew more and more irritated. The wine had loosened the filter of her mind; her emotions boiled out of control. Her vision returned to Fang constantly, and to Vanille, the two of them clearly tipsy, more affectionate than usual. Light took another sip of her wine.

Fang yawned, "All this drink's made me quite tired."

Vanille stretched, "Me too. I think we'll go off to bed."

Fang took one final swig of Swish before she set her empty cup down, made her exit abrupt to avoid conflict, "Thanks for the dinner, boys. G'night everyone."

"G'night!" Vanille added.

The soldier watched them from over the rim of her cup, the wine hitting her tongue and the back of her throat as they went, hand in hand, back to their old house, to their old room. Doubtless, soon to be together in their old bed. Light had finished another cup.

Hope's cheeks were flushed red. In their drunken state, they failed to see how intoxicated he was. The card game had dissolved into what little rules they could remember. To Hope, the game made no sense at all. His hand reached for the cup of wine absently, and he drank without the urge to drink; it was merely the ghost of an earlier deed. Snow had since poured himself several drinks of Swish and was as red as the boy. Sazh was already asleep in a chair.

"Snow," Lightning said lethargically.

"Yeah, sis?" His words were slurred.

"We came here to find our Focus, right?" She asked.

"Yup," he nodded slowly, reached again for his drink.

"Did we ever find it?"

A sullen expression came over him then despite his foolish nature, "No. This place is empty."

"Did Vanille find something?" She remained hopeful.

"No," he shook his head.

The silence between them was deafening. The realisation of their failure only just punctured the cotton-ball haze of their drunkenness, let a bit of reality seep in.

Hope piped up, his voice abnormally loud, "I think I got Bingo."

Snow and Lightning laughed mirthlessly, gave up on their game.

"I think I'll put him to bed and crash," Snow said. "Do you need a place to sleep?"

Light regarded him peculiarly, uncertain of whether or not he was genuine or drunk. Had he seen her jealousy? And if he could see it, who else could have? Perhaps he was genuine; there was only one bed left in all of Oerba, and the last time she'd shared it with another... She shook her head.

"No, no," she said, waving him off with her hand, "I've got a couch next door."

He nodded and rose from his chair. She did the same, the kitchen erupting into an inharmonious clamour of scraping, metal chairs. As she turned to leave, she glanced over her shoulder.

"Goodnight, Snow."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips, "Goodnight, Lightning."

OOO

What happened before was doomed to happen again: history repeating itself over and over. They floundered around in the nebulous space in the dark, the bed between them. The night invaded the room but the moonlight was kept out. Fingertips ran along the slender fabric of clothing, around the metal teeth of zippers and belt buckles. Hands reached for the edge of the bed and pulled the blankets back; nude bodies slipped between the heated space to find themselves together.

Fang's lips found Vanille's, searching and desperate. Arms enveloped, lips kissed and parted, fingertips parted lips and invaded, tongues penetrated. Into the darkness that lead to nowhere, and to nowhere, slipping between finesse and urgency, and returning again to nowhere, they sought to recover their memories, to be close to one another.

Lightning was stopped in the middle of the staircase, paralysed by them. She couldn't see them, too petrified to climb the last few stairs, to reveal that she'd been listening to them. Fang was touching Vanille; Vanille moaned and touched her in response. The sound of their voices pierced the silence, hard breathing and low groans, a wet smacking of lips and fingers, the rustling of fabric as they moved along the sheets. Whatever the feeling, it forced Lightning to stay. What had infected Fang and Vanille was beginning to affect her.

Her fingertips trailed up to her jacket and eased the zipper loose, slowly, to remain a shadow. The same slender fingers trailed a path across her electrified flesh to her belt buckle, pausing at her bellybutton ring to tease her. At last, they worked the buckle loose and her hand freely slipped beneath the waist of her skirt. Her other hand was crushed to her lips, to keep her desire back, to shut it inside where it belonged, where she could shudder and succumb to it in silence and alone.

She imagined Fang exploring, tongue and fingers diving down and returning, circling, downward again and returning. Lips were pressed against each other and indistinguishable, constant, plural, one and the other at once, fused, and wet, and sliding. Fang moaned. Lightning bucked against her hand. Up, up, up into that liquid haze of nothing and space, higher, higher, higher into agony. More. A sharp jolt. And more and more held, milked, tightened, until the fast, free fall from the top-down, undulating, undulating, grinding against the ecstasy, the torture, the motions slowing and seeping out. Movements became thick with lethargy and meaning; bodies were slicked with sweat. Lips were laced with names and longing, wet with the taste of the body next to them.

Lightning tasted blood. She'd bitten her hand to keep quiet. Tears fell from her eyes, less from the pain of her wound than of her epiphany. While Fang and Vanille panted, poised to hit the edge of their climax, Light's hands fell to her side: one bleeding, the other slicked with her wetness. The solitude came back to her. The sickness that infected her had become clear. She'd seen its true face. Nausea flooded her head and her stomach. She created all that she feared, found what she'd always avoided. The message was clear: to feel was to be at war.

She carefully made her way down the steps and stumbled out the opened door into the night, retching until she expelled her yellow self onto the ground.

Vanille's body shuddered; Fang wiped her lips with the back of her hand, the taste of the girl on her tongue.

Light wiped the vomit from her mouth and stood, haloed in the moonlight. Oerba languished in silent decay, an isolated plane. She walked toward one of the abandoned houses, far from the home where Vanille and Fang lived, where they were wrapped together in bed. She passed the house where Snow, Hope and Sazh were asleep, wandered as far as she could and found a house with a rooftop garden and a view of the ashen landscape. She stared at the cranes and the broken windmills revolving on the horizon until her sobs exhausted her and pulled her into slumber.

The night was on its edge, just before the hours of dawn where the darkness lingered, as though desperate to keep its place. In their old room, Fang lay with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling. Vanille was at her side, their bodies humming with chemical satisfaction. Vanille stroked her bare stomach, staring up at Fang's troubled face.

"What's wrong?" Vanille's voice was full of innocence and youth. Crystal stasis and a millennium had ceased to change her.

"Nothing," Fang smiled wistfully.

Vanille sat up and brushed the dark, dampened bangs from Fang's forehead, "How long have I known you?"

Fang shrugged, "Forever."

"And you think I don't know when you're lying?" Vanille replied.

Fang froze, clenched her jaw.

"Will you tell me?"

"It's nothing," she insisted.

Vanille crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the wall. "I know that you love her," her voice was abnormally tense.

"Vanille –"

"I've always wondered with all those years between us, if we'd ever stray from each other. I'd always imagined that it would be me," her voice trailed into the darkness.

"Stop," Fang uttered under her breath.

"I used to think about it a lot but I think I understand it now. The life we've shared, what we've felt and seen – that is _ours_. We were all alone once. All either of us had was each other." Vanille considered her words, "Tell her while you have the chance. Nothing changes between us... I won't keep you from who you love in exchange for the pretence of what we had before."

She traced the white l'Cie brand on Fang's arm. Fang seized her wrist and brought her hand round to the back of her neck. They adjusted themselves until they faced one another, lying parallel. The dawn was beginning to filter in. The air was cooler, the room lighter. The candle had long died out on the night-table but at last they could see one another. Eyes hooded by sleep and desire searched one another. Fang leaned over Vanille and brought her lips down to meet hers. The violent insistence of the night had dissolved; they slowed their movements, hands and lips lingering. It was deep into the morning before they closed their eyes and went to sleep.

OOO

TBC...


	4. Imago Dei

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually for chapter 13. So finish the game or be spoiled. The cie'th stones can wait. Seriously. I've tried them. A level is completely nuts.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: M for violence/gore and language. I don't think it's all that bad, but if you're squeamish, an extra caution for the end of the chapter.

Author's Notes: I'll try to keep the chapters short this time and simply update more often J

OOO

A shock of pain roused Snow from his slumber; his head throbbed in agony. The morning light was piercing, a blinding white fury. Gradually, he became aware of the floor beneath him, his limbs crumpled under him. There was a couch beside him, the one he'd fallen from only moments ago. He collected himself, got to his knees. Sazh was splayed over the same chair he passed out in during the night; his neck was unnaturally bent backward, Adam's apple strained against his throat. His mouth hung open and caught a lungful of deep, irritating snores. A loud retch turned Snow's attention to the window.

The sound continued, worsened as time flitted by. Snow staggered to the windowsill and cautiously put his head through the glassless space. Underneath him, just outside the house, Hope stood with his body bent forward, a hand to his stomach, puking onto the pavement. The contents of his gut jetted from his mouth. Between retches, the boy groaned in torment. Snow prepared a cup of juice for him and headed into the courtyard.

"Oh god, I hate myself," Hope murmured before another fit seized him.

The foul scent nearly set Snow's own sickness off, but he swallowed the nausea and handed the boy the drink. He was, after all, responsible for his current predicament. Hope refused it.

"I don't wanna move," he said miserably. "Make it go'way."

"Doesn't work that way, kiddo," Snow replied. "You gotta ride this out."

Lightning approached from the pathway hidden by the detritus and debris around Oerba. Her eyes narrowed at the two of them. Snow read her face easily. Disappointment there. Anger. Snow pursed his lips, remained silent. Hope was too sick to raise his head. She moved to walk past them, but for a moment her vision turned up where it lingered on the second-floor window of the Oerban's home. Snow stared at her, perplexed by the intensity she directed at the object. Her jaw clenched.

She wadded through the men's kitchen, unimpressed by the disarray. She found a cup and filled it with a bit of the alcoholic concoction Sazh had made, sipped it casually. In their supplies, she retrieved a pack of dried fruit and turned to leave. As she passed Snow he called to her.

"You okay?"

She cast a backward glance over her shoulder and gave a slight nod.

Vanille and Fang appeared in the afternoon without a trace of illness. The hangover the men were battling had lost most of its potency. Yet, they were subdued: a mixture of the aftermath of their indulgence and the futility of their quest. Oerba yielded nothing and was itself nothing, a nowhere land on the fringes of a violent world. While the Steppe was filled with the life on Gran Pulse, Oerba was the dump site of its decay, covered by the fog like an old corpse in a shroud.

The truth of it all became unspeakable but there was no lack of busywork: Taxims and Vampires regularly stalked the Oerban entrance and its streets; Seekers slithered and thumped about in the nooks of the twisted metal city; Centaurions travelled en mass through the roads and invaded the courtyard to raise mischief. By the end of the day, they were all exhausted. Yet, something was amiss.

Fang sat down on the table and scanned the various exhausted faces; Vanille was cooking dinner with a collection of their fresh Centaurion kills. The older Pulsian frowned.

"Where's Lightning?" She asked and the crowd around the table looked from one person to the other wondering how they'd missed it.

"Don't know," Snow replied, bleakness in his face.

"She's been gone since morning," Hope added. His brow furrowed.

She rose from the table and wandered to the window, resting her elbows on the sill. The steps were faint, inaudible if she didn't strain. Lightning turned the corner of the hidden path, limped through the courtyard clutching her stomach and headed into the Pulsians' home, up to the second-floor. Fang's brow furrowed.

"I'll be back," she said, rushed through the kitchen and out the door.

They watched her go with curiosity but did not pursue her, chalked it up to their prejudicial beliefs. She was, after all, a wild Pulse l'Cie. Hysteria was one of her inherent characteristics.

She lunged up the staircase; long legs overtook two steps at a time with ease. Fang spun around the corner of the doorframe. Lightning jerked in surprise.

"Don't you knock?" She scowled. She'd removed her uniform and was standing in her skirt and tank top.

"Sorry," Fang's head ducked. "I saw you in the courtyard. Thought you were hurt."

"I'm fine," she replied curtly.

Fang nodded. "It's nearly nightfall. Where were you?"

Lightning bit her lip to muffle a groan. She sent a Cure spell into the wound at her side. "On the other side of the village searching for clues."

"To what?"

Light's jaw clenched, caught between agony and exasperation. "Our Focus."

The Pulsian's looked up and her vision narrowed, "You _are_ hurt."

She moved toward the soldier and Lightning baulked. "Don't."

Fang was stunned by her rejection, the discomfort evident in her face.

A soft gasp slipped from the soldier's lips as another Cure sealed the gap in her flesh, "This is all a distraction."

Fang stared at her in disbelief.

"There's nothing in Oerba," Light continued.

A spot of resentment seeped into the Oerban's gut, "We're doing all that we can."

"Survival is not enough!"

"Survival is all we know," Fang shouted, glared at her.

"Your idle attitude is what's wasting our time."

"And your recklessness is not helping anyone," Fang stepped forward. Lightning backed away. Heat rolled off of them in waves. "You're supposed to be the one leading us. Instead, you're off getting yourself killed."

"I told you, I'm fine." She spoke through gritted teeth.

"No you aren't," Fang's voice lowered. She paused a moment, cleaned her tone of its irritation. "I think this is all too much for you."

"Nothing is too much for me."

Some of Fang's dissolve withered under the soldier's glower. "Maybe it's fine for Lightning, for that face you put on... but it's going to kill you, Claire."

Without thought, Light balled her hand into a fist and struck her in the jaw, so seething with rage that she could barely speak. "You will never, ever... say that to me again."

The Pulsian wiped her swollen lip; bright blood streaked across the back of her hand. The veins in her neck throbbed with fury, but she suppressed it. Her chest heaved. As she turned to leave, Lightning spoke.

"I'm sorry," her voice trembled. "I didn't mean to... That's not –"

Fang kept her gaze averted and headed down the steps.

Lightning finished sealing her wounds and redressed, stopped briefly to clean the blade of her sword. When she was ready, she headed back out across the courtyard, back into the depths of Oerba in search of prey, blind with anguish and a furious wrath.

OOO

It had been hours; her muscles were getting too stiff to fight. Her body throbbed with the residual ache of past injuries and fresh wounds. A strange, dizzy sensation swallowed her thoughts and her movements; each step was a little less certain than the last; each moment gone by yielded a bit less control. A familiar sinking feeling overwhelmed her and she closed her eyes, rewarded by the relief that flooded her and the anxiety ebbed from her body.

Fireworks set the sky ablaze in blossoms of multicolour sparks, spinning patterns of neon fire. She craned her neck to watch the spectacle pass emptily over her eyes, her mind elsewhere. Her thoughts drowned the noise of the crowd. She repeated the Sergeant's words over and over in her head. Best to mind your own business, he said. Nothing good comes out of meddling. Her stomach turned to acid.

She'd been through the interrogation prisons to release detainees into their care. One prison in particular held only Pulse l'Cie terrorists set aside from various Purges. They had to know what the l'Cie were planning, where and how they'd strike next. They would get it by any means necessary. And when she saw the conditions of the prison, the look of horror in those terrorist vectors that seemed all too human... Best to mind your own business.

A group of street performers sliced through the crowd, brought their musicians and music boxes with them. They formed a circle around her and danced, much to her chagrin. She stiffened as dozens of eyes set themselves upon her. The dancers had masks on their faces: a fox, a devil, a lizard, a pig, and they spun around her, morphing into one another as their speed increased. Light watched the string of masks fall in and out of her vision, making her dizzy.

An announcement sounded from the loudspeaker and the crowd began to cheer. The Primarch appeared on a throne in the sky; a sea of neon holograms lit up the night around him. She hid her distain, kept her expression stoic.

"Come see the Maker's tools!" He yelled to the crowd. Waving his hands in the sky, a cage manifested from a magic portal. Lightning strained to see the creature in it. He opened the hatch and pulled on the leash. The woman fell from the mouth of the cage and hung on the leash like it was a noose. She fought the restraint around her neck, choking. Heavy objects bounced from her flesh, hurled by the incensed crowd. The soldier gasped as she got a clear view of her. Fang's frantic struggle began to slow.

"From pain, Ragnarok is born!" The Primarch shouted.

A sudden weight manifested in her hands, heavy yet familiar. She looked down, saw the dagger Serah had given her resting in her palm. She turned to look back up at the crowd, horror spreading across her face. The crowd had parted, a perfect path formed down the center with Fang hanging at the end of it.

"Do it, Claire," she whirled at the sound of Serah's voice behind her. "Fulfill your Focus."

"Do it for Serah," Snow emerged next to her. He gestured to the rest of the group, "And all of us on Cocoon."

"Fulfill your Focus, Lightning," Hope said. "Or I'll never forgive you. You've made me a murderer."

It was true. The boy had been terrorized into adulthood, just as she had when her parents died. When she was forced to become Serah's sole guardian and caregiver. Being a soldier meant she had always had a target to suffer her misery.

The crowd erupted. _Death to Pulse! Pulse is hell!_

Dysley perked up from his throne, enraged by her incompetence, "Disembowel her." He pointed his sceptre at Fang.

She walked toward Fang's hanging body, hesitated, turned back to Serah. Everyone eyed her expectantly. She thought she heard a familiar voice in distress but the crowd was too loud for her to be sure, too big for her to see what was wrong. A redhead bobbed up and down in a sea of faces turned inward, directing their attention at the girl in the centre. She heard the shriek again. Just like the interrogation rooms in the prisons. Best to mind your own business, best to mind your own business.

Lightning stood in front of Fang and raised the dagger over her head. The crowd grew in volume; the wave of their chaos crashed at her back. Fang stared at her like a petrified animal at the hands of its abusive owner, torn between an unflinching loyalty and immense, sharp fear. Light swung the dagger.

The noise faded. The blade sliced through the leash and Fang's body plummeted to the ground where it dissolved. The world around her disappeared. The Primarch Dysley floated down from his throne and came close enough for her to see the spittle on his lips, the crust of his eyes. She expected him to kill her for her disobedience. But he smiled.

"Yes," he said. "Just like that."

And his hands reached out and grabbed her neck.

"Lightning!" The voice that came from his lips was not his own. His mouth moved again but the sound was muffled. She had the distinct sensation of falling.

"Lightning!" From the haze. "Wake up!" She recognized that Oerban twang.

Fang held her shoulders and shook her firmly. Lightning groaned. It hurt to move.

Fang scowled at her, "What the hell is wrong with you? Running out here in the dead of night! This is not Bodhum."

She hauled the soldier up by her armpits and forced her to stand. Light was glassy-eyed and distant. Her head pounded. She touched her fingertips to her forehead and tried to cast a Cure spell. Fang kept her from concentrating.

"I never asked you to follow me," she barked.

"I don't believe this," Fang said, "I can hardly believe you!If you die –"

"I can't die," Light growled. "You said so yourself."

"I said: you die if you believe your dead. Even if your body is alive, you'll be trapped in a coma until you turn cie'th."

"So be it."

Fang recoiled, put her hands on her hips as she suppressed her anger. "So that's it then? Abandon us? Abandon Serah?"

She didn't have the strength to endure the constant badgering. She coiled her muscles tightly, fought to keep her balance and hide the limp in her step. It took all of her energy to stifle the urge to strike Fang with her fist. Mercifully, the Pulsian stayed behind her, unwilling to continue bickering. As they journeyed up a road lined with towers of scrap metal, something within the debris moved. Something big. They froze, weapons halfway out of their holsters.

"Get out of here," Fang whispered. Light stayed just behind her shoulder.

"No."

"Are you mad?"

Lightning was mute. It was too costly to forsake her silence.

Again, the scrap metal moved. Fang stood in front of Light, placed a protective arm across her. It paused, studying them as they examined it, sizing them up. At last, the debris exploded as the creature burst through it. Fang pushed Light back, shielding her from the airborne rubble. The Pulsian cursed as the creature came into view. Raktavija.

She gripped Lightning's forearm and tugged, racing away from the deadly mutant. She cast a string of Slow spells to keep the creature back. They had no effect. Light struggled to keep her legs moving; pain raced like fire up her legs and across her gut. Left and then right into the serpentine roads, over a fallen machine, over again at mess of metal detritus beneath them. Under a fallen crane. Faster, faster. Fang yanked on her arm. She yelped at the sudden flash of agony.

There were cuts on her calves from the sharp metal fragments that cut her as she fled. She cast Cure in vain. The aching refused to vanish. She tumbled to the ground, crashed hard on her shredded knees and the gravel lodged itself in her wounds. Fang spun around to help her up. The Raktavija was gaining.

She dragged the soldier to her feet, shook her to instil some sliver of awareness.

"Send a signal into the air," Fang shouted. "Use your Firaga."

The Pulsian readied her bladed staff and gathered her strength. She formed a Steelguard around her body, caught the attention of the mutant with Provoke.

Lightning amassed all the strength she had left and raised her arms above her head. Her fingertips took on a ruddy glow and anguish overwhelmed her body. The flames ripped up through her back, tore at the fibrous flesh of her muscles and surged into the sky. The fireball burst and cascaded down in a red-orange rain.

A Multicast knocked Fang to her knees. She retched, bewildered by the flood of faintness and pain at once. But she forced herself up –her legs trembling –and formed the Steelguard protection-field over her body once more.

The soldier sent another warning into the night. Each surge of Fire became less potent.

It was the third attempt that got them. Snow and Sazh came bounding down the street with Vanille and Hope in tow. The Raktavija charged its Multicast and Fang's Steelguard finally dissolved. She staggered to the left, tried desperately to collect her footing. Snow cast Provoke to distract it and the group behind him hid. He used his magic to guard them. The Multicast knocked the wind out of his lungs. The rest of the group surged onward.

Hope and Vanille sent waves of Curaja over the bodies of Light and Fang. The women eased themselves upward, weapons withdrawn to fight.

Fang looked to Hope and Vanille, "Let's chain it up!"

Light, Hope, Vanille and Sazh took on the brunt of the magic attacks. Fang and Snow formed a wall of Steelguards in front of them. When the Multicast struck, Vanille switched to white magic and healed the two human shields. The process repeated until a honey-glow erupted from the Raktavija's mechanical body and the inertia force-field around it finally fell.

Fang exploded into a rage, sent the mutant into the air with her staff, stabbed it with all the might of her frustration. As it fell back down to the earth, still griped onto life, it seemed to hover for just a moment. The Pulsian was frozen there with it, stuck in a petrified limbo. The group eyed one another, unsure of what had transpired between them.

A white cloud detonated in the sky, sent the Raktavija careening backward off the far pier and into the ocean. Fang landed in a pit of scrap metal. Vanille dashed over to the landing site, Lightning at her heels. Both women grabbed Fang's arms and pulled her upward. The Pulsian shrunk away from them.

"It's gone, Fang," the young girl said, brushing her shoulder on approach.

"We got lucky," the soldier added.

"No," Fang said. She'd bunched her sari up around her waist and held it there. Her face slowly drained of colour. "No, definitely not."

Lightning stooped in front of the Pulsian, brushed the dark bangs from her eyes. A cold sweat bubbled along her olive skin. "What's wrong?" No response. She grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Fang?"

That's when she noticed it: the sari at her middle soaked with the deep violet stains of blood; the crimson saturated the fabric and streamed down her fingers. Her breath was short. A hand shot out to anchor her body on Lightning's frame; she seized Light's jacket in a fist.

"The pain is coming," Fang muttered. Her body sagged to the ground.

Lightning gently deposited her on the pavement, called for Hope. Vanille had already knelt beside the body, caressing Fang's face, sending Curasa through her veins. Light pulled back the bundled sari and the sight of what was beneath stole her breath away. Dysley's voice cut into her consciousness: Disembowel her, disembowel her! The soldier's hands shook violently, Vanille screamed when she saw it.

The others came running and were equally paralysed by it. In the moment of shock that hushed them, Fang grabbed fistfuls of dust and her bloodcurdling scream roared into the night. The pain hit perforce. Tears escaped down the corners of her eyes. Vanille was frozen. She'd never heard Fang cry like that.

The soldier clenched her jaw and forced herself into the present. There was no time for emotion, no time. She had to be objective. She ran her hands over the fleshy guts exposed to the night air, rubbed a Cure into them. No effect. Fang's howls were as loud as before. The flesh remained a red soupy mess of organs in pieces.

"Hope cast Curasa," she ordered.

The boy was still, his bottom lip trembling. She called his name. Nothing. Her temper boiled. She slapped him across the face with her open palm.

"Cast Curasa on her now!"

The boy dropped to his knees and placed his hands on the Pulsian's chest, careful to avoid the gaping torso. A flood of Curasa entered Fang's body. Lightning bit her lip and stuck her hand into the warm flesh, sifted through dark, stringy veins and obliterated muscle tissues. She bit back a wave of nausea and her tremulous hands made her search difficult.

The flesh of the intestine was frayed at the top; a thin slice had separated it from the stomach. She scoured the crimson liquid for the opening, past the bile ducts, past the pancreas. Her knowledge of anatomy was feeble at best. Liquid welled in her eyes. The fear was unbearable.

"You need a surgeon," she said, shaking her head. "I'm not... I can't..."

Fang couldn't hear her. The agony blocked out all other senses.

"Light," Vanille said, her voice broken by sobs. "Please."

The soldier looked back into the abysmal wound, measured her breathing, fought to steady her hands. She'd found the opening at the stomach and the end of the intestine that had been severed. It could be reattached. She groped inside gingerly for the slippery tube of flesh, pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and placed it next to the opening. She sent a wave of Cure into the skin, stroked her thumb over it back and forth until the flesh was sealed.

"Keep giving her healing magic," she said. Hope and Vanille nodded, unable to look at the open cavity.

Lightning continued to feel around and she contacted something hard, foreign and detached from anything around it. She was cautious as she lifted the folds of skin, revealed the object nestled in the spongy flesh of the bowels: shrapnel. Half of it was lodged into the flesh. Her hands trembled anew, fingers sliding on the metal tip, unable to grasp it. She dug her fingers into the tissue around its edges, widened the wound until she could grasp it firmly. She began to pull.

Fang unleashed a scream from deep within her chest. Vanille scooped up one of her hands and squeezed it in a fist. She bent her head to Fang's ear, tried to bring her some level of comfort. She kissed her clammy forehead, sent more magic into her body.

"Lightning?" The soldier heard Snow's tremulous voice over her shoulder.

"Not now!" She shouted, the piece of shrapnel halfway out.

"It's coming back," he said.

She peered over her shoulder to see the Raktavija advancing in the darkness, the same one they'd fought moments ago. She steadied her hands, kept pulling on the piece of metal.

It wrenched free. A jet of blood oozed from the hole where the shrapnel had been. She covered it with her palm and cast Cure until it stopped. Fang had gone silent. She turned to Hope and Vanille.

"Put your hands here," she said, gesturing toward the open wound.

"No," Hope said softly, refusing to glance at it.

"She'll die if you don't," the soldier said curtly. "Don't look at it, only look at me."

The boy obeyed and she took his hands, placing them over the chilled flesh. He winced as his hands made contact with the open wound. She spoke to him.

"Don't think about it. Both of you, cast Curasa. As much as you can."

Lightning watched the wound glow bright blue-green and the edges of the flesh fizzled as new skin cells were forced into replication, one after another in the billions, seconds passing as the muscle fibres reconnected, as the layers of skin overtop formed and closed the wound shut. Once it was closed she stood, blood stained up to her elbows and removed her gunblade.

"Snow, take her back to the house and take Vanille and Hope with you," she said. "Tell them to keep a steady Cure on her."

Snow nodded and proceeded to gather Fang in his arms. Hope and Vanille, still trembling from the ordeal, followed behind him.

Light stepped beside Sazh, ready rip the Raktavija apart.

"Get out of here, Sazh."

"No fuckin' way," he loaded a clip into one of his guns.

"I gave you an order," she glared at him.

"That woman almost died trying to protect your ass," he said curtly, "I'll be damned if I let all that be in vain."

She amassed her strength, readied her weapon.

The Raktavija charged them, barely alive. Fang had done their work for them. Sazh buried two clips into its metal hull while Light lit it up with Thundaga. Just as quickly as it came, it was dead. She stood over the smouldering carcass, the heaps of copper wire and flashes of sparks. What psychopath designed it? Her hands shook, the lasting effect of her macerated nerves. Flames rained from her palms and set the Raktavija ablaze.

Her face was cast in the red glow of the fire, "Burn in hell."

When she broke through the threshold of the door, the air was thick with the scent of blood, the static of Cure spells. Everything appeared evermore paralysed, evermore rotten. Up the landing, Hope sat on the staircase, his head in his hands, his face red and puffy from crying. She swallowed hard, took the last few steps to the top.

Fang was laid out on the bed, Vanille's head rested over her chest, her hand where the large open wound had been, glowing with Cure. Light approached the bed and Vanille rose, her own cheeks stained with tears. The soldier pulled a chair across from the fair redhead. They sat in silence, stared at Fang's pale face.

"She's not responding," Vanille said softly. "She's alive, but..."

"Give it time," Lightning's voice cracked. She took a moment to recover. "You're going to be exhausted if you continue to Cure her like that."

Vanille hesitated. The glow beneath her fingers stopped. Lightning ran her tongue along her bottom lip, lost in thought.

"It's not your fault," the young girl whispered. Light blanched. Was she so transparent?

The soldier ran a hand through her hair, her eyes welled with water. Stubborn tears that stayed in place. She reached for Vanille's hand and covered it with her own. The Oerban girl offered her a weak half-smile and pressed her cheek into Fang's shoulder.

Silence engulfed them all and with it, the rest of the Oerban town. There was no invading cie'th, no mutants gathered in the night. Everything ceased, even time, tyrannical and invariant as it was had disappeared and lost all meaning. All of the things that governed them before: work, play, politics had turned to nothing, all charades and childish games. At once, something was made real to them, the immortal l'Cie to which death was impossible.

In the night, Fang stopped breathing. They all fought to bring her back, caught in the grip of panic, fear and exhaustion. She showed no improvement, slipped between the living and the dead, trapped in a world behind her eyes. Mercifully, she stabilized and continued to breathe. Light and Vanille remained anchored at her side.

Death was real again. Too real.

TBC...


	5. Hunter's Bait

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually for chapter 13. So finish the game or be spoiled. The cie'th stones can wait. Seriously. I've tried them. A level is completely nuts.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: Teen for violence and some gore.

Author's Notes: Short chapter this time round. Something to keep the appetite going ;)

OOO

Morning came. Sleep eluded them throughout the night, sporadic and broken by fear. Hope cleaned his boomerang to distract himself from going upstairs. Moment to moment, nothing changed. Yet, they all felt they were on the constant brink of something threatening to explode. Snow ran a hand through his hair, placed his other hand on the boy's shoulder and squeezed.

"We're on patrols."

Hope nodded.

Sazh holstered his guns and shouldered his backpack. "I'm going with you."

Snow tore at a piece of jerky with his teeth, ate with the pretence of keeping his strength up. Sazh tossed a pack of candy at the boy.

"You need sugar," he said simply.

Lightning came down the staircase and they turned to her in unison, expectant. She crossed her arms over her chest. "No change."

Snow sighed, "We're gonna patrol the docks."

"Snow –"She began.

"I know you don't want us going back there. But we can't stop." He presented her his brand; details had been added to it since the previous night. The stress was deadly.

Lightning pursed her lips. "Be careful."

They headed out the door as she rummaged in the sink, rinsed a few cups. Little of Sazh's wine survived through the night, but there was enough for what she wanted. She turned to head upstairs.

Hope threw his boomerang into the air, a habit he'd picked up on their dull excursions. The usual fare flooded the roads; Taxims were easy enough to kill. The boy welcomed the fights, anything to take his mind off the night's events and the images stuck in his mind. His synergist skills were sharpening; his magic was becoming quite potent. Snow ruffled the boy's hair. He smiled up at him, imagining himself at Snow's age. What kind of man would he be? Would he be as strong as Snow? Would he surpass him?

"Hey, kiddo," Sazh said, pointing into the distance with his gun. "Wanna try sniping that one?"

Hope squinted. A Centaurion scuttled around a pile of shrapnel at the end of the street. He pulled back his boomerang. Sazh stopped him.

"No, no, not with that," he said. "With this."

He handed him one of his guns. Hope's eyes widened. "You mean it?"

"Of course," he smiled. He took the other gun in his hand. "Now, watch me."

Sazh stood with his feet apart, level with his shoulders and his hands together on the handle, arms forward in an isosceles triangle. "Look straight down the top of the gun to the two notches at the end. When the little critter is between them both, fire. Take your time and aim. Sometimes you only get one shot."

Hope stuck out his tongue in concentration, his hands wavering unsteadily.

"That's it," Sazh said, watching him. "Slowly squeeze the trigger, not with your finger though. Squeeze your fist. Everything moves as one."

A deafening gunshot thundered into air. Their ears rang from the sound. Hope brought the gun down to his side, surveyed his shot.

"I got him!" The boy beamed; thoughts of the night before whittled away for the moment. He ran toward the kill.

"Good idea," Snow said to the old man in private, watched as Hope ran ahead.

"Always wanted to teach my boy to shoot," he said.

Snow put his hand on the man's shoulder, "You will."

Hope prodded the dead reptile with his boomerang and looked for the bullet wound. A bizarre sensation fell over him, as though something was watching him. He turned back to Sazh and Snow, still some distance behind him. Nothing. He directed his attention at the docks. A figure stood on the pier covered in a long robe. His eyes narrowed. He couldn't make out the face but the robe looked familiar.

"Hope!" He heard his mother's voice. "Hope, where are you?"

He bolted, electricity racing under his skin; heat bloomed over his cheeks. His mother, his mother. He'd burned for her, whisked off into the l'Cie hell with strangers. As grateful as he was for his friends, his mother ranked above them all. More than his father, his mother was his home.

"Mother!" He threw his arms around her. "What happened to you?"

"Oh, Hope," she said, taking his forearm in her hands. She brushed her thumb across his brand. "You were always such a good boy."

Their eyes met and he drew back. Hers turned red, filled with blood. Crimson tears streaked down her face. A gust of wind sent Hope lurching backward, an Aeroga spell kept his feet in the air. His body smacked onto the pavement. He groaned in pain, clutching his chest. A Cure spell flowed through him. Hands dug beneath his arms and hauled him to his feet.

Sazh and Snow flanked him, weapons ready. They pushed Hope behind them but he squirmed away.

"Who are you?" He demanded, appalled that he was so easily fooled.

The image of his mother began to morph, a golden sceptre formed in one of her hands. A veil appeared over her face but the crown atop her head made her identity clear. The Primarch Dysley, the master of their torment.

Hope hurled a fireball at him. "Damn you! You bastard!"

"Hope, get back!" Snow shouted at him.

Dysley charged him in a blur, trapped the boy's neck in his hands and pulled upward until his feet were off the ground. He began to choke, struggled to wrap his fingers around the Primarch's icy claws to pry himself free.

"Come now, little mouse," Dysley sneered; his foul breath filled Hope's nostrils. "Bring me your white knight."

The Primarch released him and the boy slammed onto the ground. Hope struggled to his feet, crawling until he could duck behind Sazh and Snow.

Snow looked over his shoulder, his voice steady despite his shock, "Go get Lightning!"

Hope hesitated, gaped in horror as the Primarch transformed into a mammoth abomination, a fal'Cie.

Sazh urged him on, "Get outta here, kid!"

With that, he pivoted on his feet and launched himself up the road. Anguish flooded him; he wasn't strong enough to fight, wasn't capable of helping Snow and Sazh on his own.

OOO

The room had a stale quality to it; the air was thick with the scent of sweat. She took her place opposite Vanille, handed her a cup of wine. The girl took it gratefully, gripped it with two hands. Lightning sighed, eyes heavy-lidded. They'd come so far only to have struck a vicious dead-end. If only she hadn't been so weak, they would still be at full strength. They might have found something. And Fang would be alright.

"So strange to be back here," the girl drawled. "I'm a foreigner in my own home."

The soldier leaned back in her chair, stared at the ceiling. "What makes you say that?"

"Everything's ruined," she continued. "It's completely changed. I've barely had the time to realise it."

"Like you just woke up one morning and your whole world was gone," Light said, took a drink of her wine.

Vanille was taken aback, "Yeah." She studied the soldier, perplexed by the certainty with which she spoke.

Light gulped her drink, yearned to feel its effects. The cots on the other side of the room unnerved her. "Fang told me about Oerba. About how you two were branded."

"It must seem strange to hear that I miss it then," Vanille said.

"No," Lightning shook her head. "Bodhum was anything but innocent. There were things I saw there that made me lose faith in everything I thought I believed in."

"The Pulse prisons?" The girl asked.

Light nodded.

"They're legendary," Vanille added, bringing the cup to her lips.

"So much for confidentiality," she murmured.

"It wasn't all bad here though," a smile tugged at the corners of Vanille's lips, died before it was fully formed. "We made the best of it. Fang took care of me. And the matron too."

It was a soothing distraction, as erroneous as it was. "What was the matron like?"

"She was beautiful and sweet."

"Like you?" It escaped before she could stop it. Her muscles tensed anew. She was too relaxed. Stupid mistake.

Vanille flushed and shook her head. "No. More like Fang." She switched topic. "Her house is down the road from here. It has a garden on the roof."

"I've seen it," Light said. "It's very pretty."

"She used to let me up there," Vanille continued. "Just me. She wasn't supposed to care about us. She didn't even seem to feel for her own babies."

"But she liked you?"

The girl shrugged, "You can't help who you love."

Lightning's jaw clenched. She dared to look up from the safety of the floor. Vanille was waiting, stared at her with fervent intensity. The soldier ducked her gaze.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," Vanille said, her tone less resolute. "A favour."

"What is it?"

The girl looked at the woman on the bed. "Do you think she can hear us?"

"We can go downstairs if it bothers you."

"Okay."

Light rose from her chair and headed for the stairs. Each step was heavily weighted, exhausted by the night before. Behind her, Vanille tucked the blanket beneath Fang's chin and kissed her forehead. The soldier hurried down the staircase.

Vanille joined her in the kitchen. Light crossed her arms over her chest.

She arched her brow, "Now then?"

The girl laced her fingers together, picked at them nervously. "Fang would do anything to keep me from turning Cie'th. Even if it meant becoming a pawn of the fal'Cie."

Lightning's nostrils flared. Her nightmares came back to her: Fang hanging on the Primarch's leash. "And?"

"She knows it's worked before. Turning into Ragnarok, I mean. She won't take the chance to try anything else."

"Out with it, Vanille," Light said, muted anger in her electric eyes.

"I want you to betray her before she betrays you," Vanille exhaled in a rush. "Don't let her turn into Ragnarok. If she does, she'll destroy everything, like she did with Oerba."

"What makes you so sure?" The soldier's eyes narrowed.

"I know Fang won't take the chance," she said. "She blames herself for my brand. She would do anything to fix it."

"How do I stop her?" Light asked.

"Don't let Fang near Dysley," Vanille's voice trembled. "She'll cave the minute he orders her to."

Light mulled over her words. "Why me?"

Vanille swallowed hard. "I'm not strong enough to do it. You can match her in a fight. And I know that you... care about her as much as I do."

Before Lightning could form an answer, Hope crashed through the front door. He scrambled across the kitchen past them both, gasping for breath. The boy stuck his mouth under the alcohol tap and took a long drink. He waded back through the kitchen chairs to Lightning.

"We need help," he choked between breaths.

"What is it, Hope?" Lightning grabbed the boy's shoulders and attempted to steady him. "What's wrong?"

"It's the Primarch!" He cried. "At the docks. Snow and Sazh are there. I'm sorry, Light. I tried... I couldn't –"

She ignored him, clasped his hand and dragged him toward the door.

"Look after her," she called to Vanille. They shared a knowing glance.

Light threw her Eidolon crystal on the ground and Odin leapt from the gateway. She jumped on the saddle, pulled Hope onto the horse's back.

"Take me to the docks," she demanded.

Odin soared into the air, over the clusters of Oerban houses and plunged toward the docking pier. From the sky, Light saw Snow and Sazh motionless on the ground. She turned to the boy.

"You need to hide," she shouted.

"No!"

"Snow and Sazh need your help," she said. "Dysley will kill you if you give him the chance!"

"What will you do?" He said, reaching for his boomerang.

"I have a plan... but you have to stay hidden."

The boy nodded, "Okay. I'll do it."

The soldier leaned to the side and Odin dove toward the earth. She jumped from the beast and landed, surefooted, unsheathing her weapon. Light charged at Barthandelus and sank her sword into the demon's eye-socket, wrenched a gaping hole into the dense armour. The fal'Cie hissed.

"Farron!" It roared, a menacing grin stamped on its metal face. "You will lead Cocoon into the new world order!"

She blasted it with Thundaga.

"End this now," it bellowed. "Come with me to Orphan's cradle. Spare the life of the boy."

Fear gripped her gut, twisted in knots. Odin crashed into a pile of rubble, the sharp metal detritus punctured his flesh, rendered him immobile. The boy was thrown from his back and landed underneath him. Odin twitched as though mortal, petrified by pain he wasn't supposed to feel. Beneath him, Hope wrenched his body free and was instantly trapped by the Barthandelus.

Light watched with horror as his shirt was ripped away from his body, his hands raised over his head and bound at the wrist by an invisible bond. A crimson incision mark appeared along the length of his spine. The incoherent noises of his struggle turned to wails; terror and pain overwhelmed him. He called out to the soldier blindly. When no answer came, he cried out for his mother.

A flap of flesh was peeled back to reveal his spine. There was a nauseating crack. A bone shattered: a little block of vertebrae that stabbed the spinal cord with its debris. His words became incoherent. Another bone broke; the spine collapsed upon itself.

She cast Firaga. The flames burst on the fal'Cie's armour and yielded nothing. Another spell. Nothing. She threw her sword onto the pavement.

"Take me!" She screamed, a mask of twisted anguish on her face; tears streaked down her cheeks.

Barthandelus cackled. "You're human after all."

The ground rumbled beneath her. She fell to her knees, the sensation in her limbs slowly seeping out of her. She groaned, dazed by the paralysis. The soldier couldn't turn her body, couldn't see the boy. The Primarch peered over her, restored to his human form. He gathered her in his arms and carried her toward the edge of the pier. She passed underneath Hope, still frozen in the air.

"Let him go!" She shouted.

He looked down, swallowed her in a condescending glare that was all too calm, too casual.

"You maggot-minded race," he said. "Introduce a bit of pain and you fawn over your abuser. Turn on your own kin."

He snapped and the boy's mutilated body ignited. Hope made no sound, unconscious from the pain. Lightning screamed, horrified. This was a hell she had never seen. A world she did not know.

Dysley ran his fingertips over her lips, magic running through them as he stole her voice.

"Silence!" He bellowed. The Primarch shook his head. "How could the Maker have trusted you with this world? Weak, superstitious little things."

His grip on Hope relented and the charred body fell, bounced on the pavement. A brittle arm broke off the corpse; the flesh of his knees ripped like paper. She could not move, could not speak, forced to suffer her pain in total isolation. Why, she thought. Why, why. And he smiled.

"From pain, Ragnarok is born."

White light engulfed them and darkness swallowed her mind. The Primarch disappeared from the pier, the soldier with him, leaving in his wake the butchered bodies of the male l'Cie.

To Be Continued...


	6. Cain & Caliban

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually for chapter 13.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: It's M just for language I suppose. Otherwise, it's T.

Author's Notes: Fang/Vanille fans will probably enjoy the coming chapters; Fang/Lightning fans take heart and endure. Your rapture will be coming soon :P

OOO

"Vanille!"

The young girl jerked awake and stumbled from her chair. Bewildered, she groped the bed sheets for an anchor. The voice rang in her ears. Fingers clawed at her hand and gripped them in a fist. Her eyes widened.

"Vanille," the Oerban's voice was horse, a bit softer than before.

"Fang?" Her lower lip trembled; relief crept into her chest.

Hazy blue-green eyes fluttered open hooded by long dark lashes. Her eyes narrowed, focused and searched the young girl's face. She fought to lift her wrist, stiffened muscles protested her movement. The Oerban collapsed back onto the pillow and sought contact with Vanille, cupped Vanille's cheek. The girl closed her eyes in ecstasy and kissed Fang's open palm.

"Something's wrong," she said.

Vanille's heart dropped; a lump lodged in her throat.

"What is it?" She asked.

"I don't know, baby," Fang replied, her voice disappearing. "But something's wrong."

Her forehead was damp with sweat, dark bangs stuck to her brow in clumps. Vanille brushed them from Fang's face. Her skin was hot beneath the layer of sweat; her eyes were vacant and glazed.

"You've got a fever," the girl said. "Be still and rest."

Fang shook her head. "Where is everyone?"

Vanille swallowed hard. Lightning and the others hadn't yet returned. Fang noticed the hesitation.

"Where are they?"

"On patrols," she said curtly. Fang was unconvinced.

The raven haired warrior strained to get up out of bed. Vanille gently pushed her back down on the pillow.

"Stop," she said softly, "You're not ready."

"Please," Fang said, gripping the girl's forearm.

"I'll go check on them," Vanille said.

"You can't go alone," Fang croaked.

"I can and I will," she replied swiftly. Fang began to protest but the girl silenced her.

She bent her head and kissed Fang's forehead. Fang's hand snaked up and held the back of her neck, pulling her down to her lips. Vanille crushed her lips against Fang's; desperation and dread stirred inside the girl, wrought from the trauma of the days passed. When they parted, Vanille was breathless.

"Be careful," Fang said.

Vanille nodded. "Will you be okay while I'm gone?"

"Yes," Fang answered.

The girl dipped her head and kissed her again. She was reluctant to leave her tender mouth; her feet were fixed to the floor. At last, she pulled away and gathered her supply pouch from its corner in the room. She descended the stairs without looking back, left Fang daze and alone in her wake. She was flooded with an unnerving disquiet, in part from the knowledge that Fang was on her own. The other part, something far more sinister, as though a hidden space in her body –unseen and uncertain –was abruptly dying, rapidly fading.

Yes, she thought. Something was very wrong.

OOO

There was an eerie mood to the empty streets. It took her to her past, to the day that she and Fang were branded and the world around them ceased, when the Oerbans evaporated. There were no cie'th, no mutants, no wildlife, as though the streets had been recently cleared. She passed a dead Centaurion carcass with a bullet hole through its neck. Death was everywhere.

Vanille approached the docks; the balmy air that rolled off the sea permeated her skin and filled her bones, transported her to the honey-tinted summers spent barefoot in the springs, naked in the water; took her to the sunless winters where the humidity blanketed her skin while the cool rain chilled her body. And Fang was always with her, her arms around her and her body near: childhood to adolescence, adolescence to adulthood.

Together they toiled in the dust and the heat, struggled to survive in those early years, buried the worry of their l'Cie brands with the rest of their sorrows. They were abandoned but they were not alone. They had each other. Yet, life on Pulse was hideous; it engulfed them in chaos, made them keenly aware of their lowly rank on the food chain, made them want for the violent need to eat and kill to stay alive. But with the horrors of life came the stunning awe of it: the honesty of friendship, the intoxication of love, magnetism of desire, and the curious and delicious discovery of sex. She realised, with some contempt, how much she missed her life before the war, before crystal stasis, before Ragnarok.

This new breed of misery was unknown to her: the hell that she'd witnessed was unlike any other carnage she'd witnessed before. She watched man meld with machine and become a tool of the fal'Cie, a hollowed shell groomed to kill. Nature provided its own unmitigated cruelty: large mutants stomped the smaller creatures beneath them, dashed out their brains on the grass. But this war they were fighting – the war on and of Cocoon, the crusade of the Primarch – was an evolution of all past brutality. Even the wildlife seemed engulfed in the Primarch's madness: the Chonchons in the Tower, the Raktavija in the shadows were all rabid and foaming, impassioned with the wrath and the solipsism of Dysley's words. A sadistic vein ran through them, and Vanille wondered, if it was the Maker who put it there... if it was the Maker who made the Primarch? The Maker who designed Orphan, who designed Ragnarok? Was it the Maker who made her and Fang so fragile, who made the whole of the human race, l'Cie or not, susceptible to so much pain, to paranoia, to confusion, to hate?

A strange mass lay next to the pier and behind it were the bodies of Snow and Sazh splayed on the pavement. She ran to them, fingertips glowing with the beginnings of Raise. A single spell for each of them was enough and the men were reanimated, beckoned from hibernation back into the waking world.

Sazh cursed, the signature drawl of his voice brought a weak smile to Snow's face. The blonde sentinel winced as he stood, clutching an invisible wound at his side. The old man scanned the expanse of the docks, wandered toward the pier.

"You okay?" The girl asked.

"Fine now," Snow said.

Snow looked around, realised that Vanille was alone. "Did Hope come with you?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Hope ran into the house and said you needed help. Lightning left with him. I just got here."

"Where is she?" The sentinel asked, surveying the horizon.

The girl shrugged. "Do you see anything, Sazh?"

The old man was motionless, stood over a pile of rubble.

"Sazh?"

Nothing. Then suddenly, he collapsed to his knees.

Vanille walked toward him, "What is it –"

She stopped abruptly, her eyes falling upon the twisted edges of a burnt hand, broken mid-forearm, lying on the ground. She took a step, pulse lodged in her throat. Another step. Now feet and knees, both frayed at the joint, all charred, then the rest of the leg, fabric burned into the skin at the waist. Another step. Her hands covered her face, covered her eyes and mouth. A gasp escaped her. A shrill cry.

That got him. Sazh turned to her and rose to his feet, a violent look in his glazed eyes. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Spittle flew from his mouth. His body plunged into a rage, trembled from the force of it.

"Now you fix him!" Sazh yelled. "You fucking fix him!"

Snow caught up to them to intervene when he saw Hope's corpse. Thought left him, reason fled him. His mouth hung agape. It was incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. Unreal. He shook his head: no, no and no over and over again on his tongue. Fal'Cie magic –it must have been. All illusions.

Vanille whimpered; Sazh dug his fingers into her arms.

"Concentrate!" The old man yelled. "Put your hands out and heal him!"

She sobbed, unable to cast her eyes upon the boy's remains. Sazh shook her again, groped in the holster at his waist for one of his pistols.

"You fix him!" He shouted. "Ya hear me? You fix him!"

Snow crawled toward the corpse and collected the disconnected limbs. He held the boy's hand and wrist against the stubbed forearm and cast Cure. When it had no effect, he tried again.

"No," he said. The word wouldn't leave him. "It's not working."

Vanille squirmed away from Sazh and knelt beside Snow. What was it she read in those books she'd stolen from Cocoon, back in the engineering labs she razed. What was it? Nanomachines, was that it? Something about burns on the cellular level, the barriers broken by fire and the primordial lifeblood bled out of each tissue cell. As she struggled to recall it, she remembered Fang standing over her shoulder, trying to decipher it with her, the signature smirk on her face as she rolled over in bed, as a lock of dark hair fell over her eyes. In a rush, it came to her.

"Sazh cast Haste on him," she said. "Keep doing it. Most of these cells are dead and can't replicate. If there's living tissue, I need it to grow quickly."

The old man obeyed, wavering hands shot out and from them Haste flowed through his fingertips. The boy's charcoal-flake skin glowed red with each successive spell. Vanille held Hope's wrist to his broken forearm and Curasa transferred through her grip. As the Haste caught, the Curasa spell generated muscle tissue under the skin, tied the limb to the stump. The flesh sealed and she moved onto the boy's knees, repeated the process.

"Snow cast Water," she said.

Fresh liquid cascaded around the boy. Denatured proteins remoulded and sucked up the water that soaked Hope's body, reformed the cell walls of his tissue, injected life back into them. Sazh fumbled in his backpack for a potion and poured it onto the boy's face. A bit of the charred flesh reconnected and became smooth. He repeated it, uncorking each vial with his teeth, his other hand casting Haste. Hope's skin took on a plastic quality as it healed.

The boy's head slowly tossed to the side, an incoherent groan as he reached for consciousness. Vanille cursed. His limbs weren't fully connected.

"Snow," she barked. "Cure."

The sentinel's fingers glowed green and the magic invaded Hope's cells. Tactile sensations tripped along the myelin blankets of nerves, ignited in the axons and transmitted to the boy's fingers, to his knees. Movement. Yet that artificial look to his skin clung to him: a shiny layer of gloss that made it reflective. Large spaces of his scalp were revealed beneath bald patches where the fire had scorched through to the flesh. But he had his voice –a moan – some semblance of his former self. There was life to him again.

Sazh gathered him up and proceeded to carry him. Snow, distraught, surveyed the pier.

"You said Lightning came with him?" He asked.

Vanille nodded.

The sea rolled lethargically back and forth toward the shore, clean of all but the froth of the waves. He approached the pier, threw off his jacket and headscarf. Snow called behind him.

"Take him back to the house."

"And leave you here?" Vanille stared in disbelief.

Snow ignored her, dove into the water and began his search.

"If he wants to get killed, it's his problem," Sazh said, a scowl on his face. "Hope needs you."

She pursed her lips, nodded with apprehension.

It was a long, quiet walk back to the Oerban courtyard.

OOO

The dark haired Pulsian stared at the ceiling, hands behind her head, a splintering thought lodged in her mind. Something was unnerving her though she didn't know what it was, and lying in bed alone she was filled with the dread of sick fantasies, all featuring the image of the female soldier. From the darkness of her mind questions asked and answered flew in and out of her consciousness. Why Lightning? From that shadowed abyss. But the reply came up empty and died in the primordial haze of her brain.

The last time she'd woken with the taste of Cure in her mouth and the scent of it in her nose, she was not alone. Lightning was with her; her warm body on top of her. Fang lamented her absence in spite of the tension between them. In each other's presence, temptation gripped them, swirled around them soft and inviting. And they had almost given in.

The thought of Vanille leaving her made her chest ache. She'd betrayed the girl; the moment of her betrayal's final, decisive act was merely a matter of circumstance and time. Fang still adored her, still desired her and would set the world aflame to prove it, burn it all and watch with none but Vanille at her side. What had happened to Oerba would happen again. But now this wretched choice, this hesitation, this woman: Lightning. Claire Farron. The extra, unseen variable that crumbles the whole experiment, plunders the laboratory and the science with it, annihilates everything. And Fang wanted it: that destruction, that betrayal, wanted to be undone, to be cast into flailing uncertainty. It was the only way she knew how to live; life in the face of impossible circumstances, pain unimaginable, trust and attachments fleeting.

But that was why she worshipped Vanille. The friend who never left her, who risked not only her life, but her mind, turning into l'Cie to be near her, to strike out and watch eternity with her, going mad, getting bored and frustrated, losing control. It was not unlike their first meeting: she was a little wisp of a child sitting in a cordoned playpen, bald head dusted with feather-light red hair. Fang was hauled into the middle of the room, a squirming five-year-old, sprite and beyond her years, a dangerous disposition for females in Oerba. The matron was above her, the maid, and a priest – the foreign male body in their midst – all holding her down.

Spittle flew from the priest's mouth. "Little bitch! Full of original sin!"

And the matron too, a Judas. "Hold her down, Father!"

And the maid, "Do it now! I don't have the strength for this."

Fang was hysterical, struggling and screaming. Vanille, startled by the noise, began to cry. She knew nothing of language but she could feed off of tension, read the distress on the dark haired girl's face.

The priest cursed, got up to smack Vanille for interfering. Before he could, Fang had wriggled free and stood over the baby with her hands and legs spread out to form a shield.

"No!" Fang screamed. Simplistic, childish word with so much power in it.

"How dare you!" He managed through clenched teeth; the veins in his neck protruded, his cheeks burned hot.

Vanille continued to cry as the flustered women dragged Fang back to the centre of the room, as the priest prepared the sharp, thin, reed and dipped it in ink.

"Suffer the mark of Cain you little shit!" He said. "Damaged piece of Eve's flesh!"

Fang wailed as the needle-like reed dug into her arm and stabbed the tattoo into her skin, permanently labelled her flesh with the sin of the human race, with the mark reserved for dirt and worms. She was a thing of demons now, a thing of hellfire. It was completely unknown to her as a child and to Vanille, to her keepers and the priests, how much hell and fire she would come to sow, what ruin she was destined for.

A glass crashed onto the floor in the kitchen. Fang froze. It was too soon for Vanille to be back. She waited, measured her breathing. More clattering and glasses breaking. She sat up, groaned as her abdomen filled with pain. Her hand clamped over her mouth as she gingerly manoeuvred to the edge of the bed. She placed her feet flat on the floor and tried desperately to stand, the shooting pain inflaming her gut. Fang collapsed, the sound of her clumsy fall thundering through to the ceiling on the floor below.

Unable to stand on her own, she shimmied underneath the bed, listened for a response on the first floor. It came swiftly in the form of laboured footsteps that marched up the stairs. She peered underneath the bed-skirt, her cheek flattened onto the carpet. A deformed purple-blue arm swung into view, then a leg, and then another. Rotting flesh: vampire cie'th. It threw its swollen, boulder-like fists as it lunged through the room, knocked shelves from the wall and destroyed the artefacts of her and Vanille's childhood home. She bit her lip, suppressed the rage that rolled through her.

It stopped at the foot of the bed. Perhaps it could it hear her breathing, smell her scent. The cie'th took a step toward her. Another. It wandered near the bed; she could touch its leg with the subtlest movement. Fang squeezed her eyes shut. Her bladed staff was too far away. She was trapped.

The dread that had plagued her in the afternoon was finally made real. Her body had betrayed her. She wished she wasn't injured and alone; she wished that Lightning was there.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	7. On Borrowed Time

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: eventually for chapter 13.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: I will give this fanfiction an overall rating of M, since you won't be able to finish it without encountering swearing, explicit violence and sexual scenes.

A/N: Very special thank you to my beta-reader, Oerba Yun Fang, for all of her time and help in putting this chapter together! :D

OOO

The old man kept a stoic face, looked to the boy in his arms and switched to the path ahead. Vanille kept silent, still shaken by the old man's rage, the rabid look in his eyes. The walk was just several minutes long from the pier to the courtyard but her mind – already perturbed by the events at the dock – flooded with dread, thoughts of Snow drowning in the murky sea.

When her home came into view, she stopped. Sazh cursed. From the kitchen window frame – glassless and rusted for years – they could see the giant cie'th bumbling through it: destroying the furniture, punching holes into walls. At once it hit her: Fang was alone and vulnerable. She unclipped her healer's staff from her belt. Sazh sought out a niche beneath the front steps, tucked Hope gently into the shadowed space and followed Vanille up the stairs.

She stumbled past the first Vampire and climbed the steps on her hands and knees to the second floor. Fire raced over her flesh and behind her eyes as she was struck on the back of her skull with a heavy paw. She dropped to her knees, impressed by the pain coursing through her head, the faintness overwhelming her senses. Gunshots thundered through the haze. Sazh ran up the staircase.

"You okay?" He called to her.

"Yes," she replied, wincing from the injury. Cure ran through her palm into the back of her head.

Sazh emptied two clips into the Vampire's chest. Thundaga roared from Vanille's fingertips and drowned the fiend in an electrical storm. It did not take long to stagger the beast – clumsy and tedious as it was – and when it finally gave in, disappearing into a black cloud of smog and dust, Vanille paused to scan the room. Nothing – nothing but the debris of shelves and knickknacks, no corpses, no traces of anything at all.

"Where's Fang?" Sazh asked.

"Down here!"

The voice was hoarse and quiet but they each caught it, saw the hand jut out from beneath the bed and claw at the ground. Vanille's chest swelled, small relief in the tragic afternoon. She clutched Fang's hand and gripped her forearm, dragged her out slowly from beneath the mattress. Loud footsteps stomped up the stairs – another Vampire. Sazh filled its body with bullets. It crested on the staircase and Vanille moved to fight it, shielding Fang with her body as the warrior tossed Ruin bombs in the Vampires direction. It fell quickly to the triad assault.

With the cie'th dead, Sazh returned to the nook in the staircase outside and retrieved Hope's body gingerly. The boy moaned; the phlegm gargled in the back of his throat as his hand reached up, twitching, weak little fingers brushed against the old man's cheek.

"It's alright now," Sazh consoled, and he imagined it to be true. "It's alright."

The boy's plastic-like hand dropped and his eyelids moved but remained closed. He climbed the staircase and entered the house. His footsteps echoed up the steps leading to the bedroom. Fang gasped when she saw the boy; Vanille helped her sit up on the floor. The huntress stared at him, unable to understand it, terrified by his emaciated form. Neither quite human nor a monster, the body hung heavy and half-dead in the old man's arms.

"What happened to him?" She asked.

"Dysley." Sazh said simply.

Her brow furrowed. "The Primarch?"

The silence was her only answer. She scrutinized the old man and his eyes – upon catching the heat of her gaze – averted to the floor. She turned to Vanille and the girl ducked her stare.

"Where's Lightning?" Fang asked.

Hope moaned, incoherent gargling at the back of his throat.

"Come downstairs," Vanille said; her proffered hand hung in the air expectantly.

She bit her lip and swallowed all her curiosity and let Vanille help her up. With an arm over Vanille's shoulder, she wobbled to the opening of the staircase. Vanille turned to the old man for a moment, "I'll be back."

Sazh nodded.

In the kitchen, Vanille installed her on a chair. The girl averted her eyes.

"Where is she?" The huntress repeated.

Vanille opened her mouth to speak, shut it quickly when she could find nothing to say. Her gaze fell upon the floor. The silence stretched the air thin, wore on their macerated nerves. Fang reached out and cupped Vanille's hands between her own, stroked the smooth skin with her thumb.

"Tell me," it was almost a whisper.

Vanille pursed her lips to keep them from trembling. She chewed on the inside of her cheek. Her eyes glassed with tears and she sighed.

"She's gone," the girl said.

"What do you mean, gone?" Fang asked, tried in vain to keep her anger suppressed.

"Just gone," the girl repeated softly.

"Vanille!" The yell came from the second floor. It was the old man.

"I can't talk about this now," the girl said, her eyes skirting from the Pulsian's gaze to the floor. She turned without another word and dashed up the stairs.

Fang sat in the chair, doubled over in agony. Cure had lost its potency. There was nothing to be done about her sore muscles other than to use them. She started by slowly leaning forward to touch her toes, huffed and clenched her jaw, tried to transcend the pain. Curses flew from her mouth upon exhale. She rose and sucked in another breath, bent to brush her fingertips across her toes – back up. The ritual repeated and she counted to ten, to twenty. The pain in her abdomen abated slowly, ebbed from her muscles with each repetition.

She trembled getting to her feet, braced herself on a chair and staggered across the kitchen to the fridge. From the fridge back to the kitchen table. She tried it again, straightened her spine and squared her shoulders when she returned to the table, counted how many seconds she could hold her own weight before she gave into the pain and sagged into a seat.

Snow propped himself up in the doorway; tiny streams of water dripped from his saturated clothes onto the floor. His eyes were red and swollen, his cheeks paste-white and gaunt. The lines on his forehead were pronounced. Trauma had been carved into him, permanent and absolute.

After a few long minutes he noticed her and ran a hand through his damp blonde hair.

"You're awake." He said simply.

Her knees were starting to buckle; she eased onto a chair. "Yeah. Whatever you lot did, you did good."

"You look a little green," he remarked.

"I could say the same for you," she quipped and gestured toward his clothes. "What happened?"

Snow pulled a chair out from the table and sat across from her, his clothes made a soft squishing noise as the water trailed a path behind him. "How much do you know?"

"Nothing," she said. Then she shook her head. "I saw Hope."

He grimaced; nausea hinted at the back of his throat. He ran his hand across his mouth. "How is he?"

"Looked bad. Vanille and Sazh are upstairs with him now."

"I don't know exactly what happened," the sentinel said, gesturing with his hands. "He was burned all over."

"By Dysley?"

"Yeah."

"Rat bastard," Fang muttered under her breath.

Snow's bleak gaze fixated on the floor. He folded his hands in his lap, leaned forward on his knees.

"I don't know where she is." It was barely audible, but the Pulsian caught the traces of it.

"Who?" She asked, dread welling up in her gut. She already knew the answer.

He sagged into the chair; his stare met hers. "There coulda been ten thousand corpses in that ocean and I wouldn't be able to find even one."

She bit her lip, swallowed hard. "What makes you think she's there?"

"No one just vanishes," he said, vision back on the floor.

"What about Dysley?"

"Gone too."

"Then she is wherever he is," she said, determined it as truth, a promise made to herself, private and unalterable.

He ran a hand through his soggy hair. "And where is he?"

She faltered as she got to her feet, "That's what I'm gonna find out."

He helped her stand and she tried to push him away, ambling forward between the kitchen chairs. When he attempted to come to her aid, she shrugged him off again, too proud to feel vulnerable, to be led about like a child. She would pay for her conceit in pain but she would do it alone, in secret, and of her own volition. She struggled to the other side of the room.

Snow broiled in the corner, arms over his chest, captive to his own frailty. He was no hero, no soldier, no rebel and no man. He was weak, confused and hopeless, gone looking for a Focus and unable to find it, wasting time in a rotting village without any direction. In his care, his lover was lost, his sister gone missing, a friend almost fatally wounded and a boy burnt and tortured, nearly to death. What manner of man let his family unravel and die? He seized a chair from the floor and drooped into it, sat paralysed on it into the night.

Fang's exercises became the regimen of the evening: pacing in and out of agony, tracing over her steps, going round and round the kitchen until at last she could stand and sit with relative ease. The grey-blue light of dusk morphed into the darkness of the night and she fumbled toward the porch steps, descended and started the generator. The noisy motor roared to life and yellow-light filled the innards of the dilapidated Oerban homes. The pain continually faded from her gut.

She wandered up to the second floor, mindfully turned the corner to the hushed room. Sazh sat at one end of it, his face in his hands. Hope was on the bed, naked and motionless; the charcoal-burns on his skin flaked like scales. Vanille's hands roamed over him from his chest to his forehead, back down to his stomach, to his legs. She covered every inch of him, Curasa running from her fingertips, lifting the layers of dead skin from his body, healing the layers of flesh underneath. The huntress approached the bed, placed a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder.

Vanille jerked and whipped around, took a moment to register the woman's presence. The girl was pale, her eyes dim, her energy exhausted on magic. She clawed at Fang's forearm and the huntress pulled her up to embrace her, kissed the top of her head. Vanille pulled away.

"You're walking," she said softly, a lazy smile emerged on her face.

Fang grinned in kind. "Go get cleaned up and sleep. I'll watch him."

The girl wearily peered over at Sazh.

"Go," the huntress repeated. "He'll be fine."

The girl pried herself from the embrace and headed to the shower.

She placed her hands on the boy's chest, palms flat, and poured Cure into him. The skin rose, brittle and charred, flaked into jagged pieces and lifted. She plucked a large piece of the scaly flesh between her thumb and forefinger and peeled it away; fresh pink tissue lurked underneath. She reached for another piece, cast Cure and gently removed the burnt layer. New rose-tinted skin. She felt something beside her, turned and jerked in surprise. Sazh had moved next to her, stood over the boy.

"He's healing well," she said, unsure of what to say.

He said nothing, simply stared. More skin flaked from Hope's body. Fang stopped, avoided Sazh and descended the stairs to the kitchen, returned with a rough washcloth. She ran it over Hope's face; large portions of the scaly flesh fell away from his cheeks, from his brow. The old man picked at the boy's ankle, pulled the dead skin away. Hope's eyelids fluttered lightly; he was conscious of the movement, of the air hitting sensitive skin.

"That better?" She asked, her voice soft.

He gave a very subtle nod.

They turned Hope onto his stomach, proceeded to clean the brittle layers of skin from his back. Minute streams of blood flowed from bits of severed tissues. She cauterized them with Cure until the flesh turned pink and raw. The giant blanket of flesh was now one and connected instead of the splintered mess that it was. The process was slow, monotonous, but when it was done, they rolled him onto his back again, cleaned the spaces between his fingers and toes to rid them of dead flesh. They tossed the charred scraps of skin into a metal bucket. Fang would set fire to it later.

"When you find Dysley," Sazh said, "Leave him for me."

The silence stretched between them.

"I can't make that promise."

He shrugged. "All this stuff about the Maker... he took my son, ruined my life... and for what?"

Fang had never been very religious. "I've never been able to figure out the Maker's idea of justice."

Sazh brushed the back of his hand over the boy's forehead, over the patches of hair that were disfigured and sparse where the fire ate it away.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Maybe there isn't one."

"Is that what you were raised on? Benevolent Maker?"

The old man crossed his arms over his chest. "Suppose that's the part we got wrong?"

Fang arched her eyebrow and met his gaze.

"Maybe it's hate," he said. "When the Maker realised all he made were monsters."

In a rush the agony of Ragnarok overwhelmed her; the sights and sounds trapped in the inferno of the demon's mind, the consuming wrath that pumped in her veins, and all the while the shrieking of some far-away animal, something warm and wet beneath her feet. More screams. Vanille was in the distance too far to see, changing into cie'th, becoming mortal and dying, sucked into the ground and morphed into worms. Irretrievable. Forever.

She swallowed her nausea; yellow bile snaked out the corner of her mouth. She brushed it away with her hand.

Hope groaned.

His voice was faint but clear. Sazh clasped the boy's wrist; Fang leaned over him.

"Hope?" The old man's voice wavered.

"Light-ning." He said.

"What about her, Hope?" She watched him with wide eyes.

One of his hands snaked up to his throat, rubbed his Adam's apple with thin palps of fingers.

The huntress shared a perplexed glance with the old man.

"Dysley." The boy managed before an anguished grimace overcame him; he clutched his chest.

"That's enough," Sazh said firmly. Fang pursed her lips and nodded, said nothing more.

The old man pulled the blanket up over him and hushed the boy until he was still and sleeping. Sazh pulled out one of the chairs and sat beside the bed.

"I'll stay here for tonight," he said.

"Alright." The Pulsian nodded, glanced fleetingly at Hope and headed for the stairs, through the foyer and out into the Oerban night.

It was quiet out –peaceful – and the air was light. Summer heat hinted its looming arrival. Warm light glowed from the kitchen window ahead in the house they'd reserved for the male l'Cie, but it was Vanille who stood framed inside of it, dark auburn locks hanging heavy and wet around her face. Snow rummaged about in the room upstairs, scurried down the staircase to the basement. They were all accounted for except for one.

Her thoughts were no longer her own, a gramophone track skipping and repeating: Lightning over and over. The situations varied: worry, curiosity, sick, sadistic fantasy that left her nauseous and full of grief. She was helpless in the lower world, had no clue where Dysley had taken the soldier or what he would do to her. A sudden, frustrated rage consumed her. Dysley and the SANCTUM, the Maker, Ragnarok – all of it –had perverted everything she'd known, destroyed her hometown village and the world around it. Pulse had been made into an endless nightmare.

The revolting sound of retching dissolved her reverie. In the kitchen, Vanille was bent over the sink as she vomited. Fang leapt forward, lunged up the steps and was quickly at her side, gathered the girl's hair into a ponytail and brushed it away from her face. She murmured to her, dispassionate words of comfort as another violent heave sent a wave of yellow rot cascading into the sink. The huntress turned the knob on the faucet and watched the putrid mess swirl down the drain. Vanille cupped the water in her hands and drank it, cleaned her mouth.

The girl turned away from the sink and looked up at her. Fang gasped. Vanille's eyes looked darkened and burnt-out, her complexion sallow, rose-tinted cheeks now pale, lips plum and trembling from the cold. The panic-stricken huntress cupped the girl's face in her hands. She placed a palm on Vanille's forehead. A fever.

"Oh god," she mumbled. She seized the girl's forearm and helped her upstairs to one of the beds. The huntress tore the sheets back and eased Vanille onto the mattress. "You're burning up!"

The girl regarded her with a wistful smile. "You've always been so beautiful, Fang."

Fang froze. Dread crept into her gut. A thought niggled at the back of her brain and she lifted the girl's skirt, leaned over her, and searched for her brand on her upper thigh. When she found it she chewed her lip, glanced back at Vanille slowly slipping into delirium. The mark was too advanced. Far too advanced. Fang's eyes glassed with tears. She cursed under her breath.

"Vanille?"

The girl showed no reaction. She didn't blink.

"No," the huntress wept, brushed the stray locks away from the girl's forehead. "Don't."

"I love you, Fang," she said; her eyes were empty.

She seized Vanille's hand between both of her own and sat next to her on the thin pallet. Their fingers wound together; the huntress held them to her cheek as tears trickled over them. "I love you too, Sweetheart."

How quickly life swirls into hell, calm into violence, peace into war. An ordinary moment passes into history and becomes a disaster in the lapse of a second, a minute. Fang kissed the girl's forehead, wracked with guilt. With failure. Time was up.

Dark crimson seeped into the whites of the girl's eyes; her pupils grew into dark pools of filmy black oil rimmed with yellow jaundice . Fang bent over her, sobbing and terrified. She kissed the girl's cheeks; a sheen of sweat had formed over them. Vanille's chest heaved with each struggling breath. Her hand shot out, gripped a fistful of Fang's sari and pulled at it. The girl's eyes were on the ceiling but Fang wasn't sure she could see anything at all.

"It's horrible!" Vanille shrieked. "Horrible!"

A deep, gutteral scream came from the house next to them. Fang whipped her head in the direction of it. Sazh stuck his head out of the second floor window and expelled the contents of his stomach onto the front steps.

The huntress frantically gathered the girl into her arms, placed a hand to the back of her neck as she cradled her. Vanille buried her face in the crook of Fang's neck as she murmured nonsense.

"They were here all the time, y'know? Watching and waiting."

"Who, Vanille?" She peeled the girl from her body and stared at her face.

"Can't you hear them?" Their eyes met. Fang was certain she could see her.

A strange humming noise filled the night and a metal canister soared through the window, bounced loudly on the floor. The huntress couldn't see what it was. Little black device of some sort. And then it happened: a white light flashed in her eyes and left her blind; a high-pitched frequency rang in her ears as her vision swam slowly into focus. Psychedelic imprints of objects swayed in her sight until finally, haltingly, she came to and saw them, rifles drawn and fully armoured.

The SANCTUM army poured into the home. Vanille was slipping away from her, torn from her grasp. She was sure she was moving but she didn't know how, dark visor-clad eyes hung over her, studied her. She was dizzy. Nauseated. The room began to spin again. And just as she reached for Vanille somewhere out in the abyss of air and soldiers swarming, she blacked out into nothingness.

OOO

How long had she been there? Days? Weeks? Odd, eerie place to be: where time is omnipresent and completely incalculable, here but not here, there and gone. The room was cloaked in shadow most of the time but when the lights did come on, she could see the tiny concrete room she was in, the markings of the trap door beneath her, the dark gray stains of water on the wet stone. She was naked. And she could see her shackled ankle tied to an iron ring just beyond the line of the trap door, the bloody rings around her leg where the metal bruised and ate away at her flesh.

As a soldier, she'd been trained to resist and endure torture. As a citizen of Cocoon, she never had to face it. Cocoon soldiers were the death-dealers and the torturers, the might of the world, the army of god: the Maker. They were untouchable, unconquerable. She chuckled bitterly as the irony rooted in her brain. The Pulse prisons had been much like her cell, her SANCTUM torturers like the Guardian Corps and PSICOM special ops interrogators. It was best to mind your own business, yes, when the PSICOM troops barged into the female detainee cells and raped them, switched over to the men's wards and did the same, when they turned fire hoses on the resistant prisoners or beat them into a coma for their uncooperative attitudes. And she, a little foolish ideologue tried to stop them when they were so much bigger than she could ever have imagined. Now she was on the receiving end, feeling weak and small. White, upright Lightning was fading. Claire – rotten and yellow – was exposed, tortured and dying.

She'd almost forgotten where she came from, how she'd gotten there. The Primarch was kind enough to give her voice back to her. She could hear his voice in her head when she was forced to take the plunge and sent into the watery oblivion by the chain, dragged back up by her own force of will and panic. She'd forgotten her powers, forgotten her Focus. Nothing existed beyond the concrete walls. Everything real was yellow and on the inside.

One thing she remembered above all other things: the warmth of another, a beautiful, exotic dark-haired woman that the state labelled her enemy. The Primarch insisted she think of her, that she hold onto that thought but he never told her why. Claire didn't care about him or what he thought. She wanted to know more about the lovely woman in her dreams; the one she imagined held her in the night and kissed her in the morning. She wondered if it was perhaps another life. All of the thoughts she had felt impossibly real.

The florescent lights burst and illuminated the room. She blinked, unaccustomed to the brightness. The ground rumbled and the floor gave way. She fell backward into the pit, headfirst into the water as the ring of the chain filled her ears, marking her depth with the series of metal links. She sliced through the water, descending, her wits about her this time. This had happened a hundred times – a thousand times? – already. She knew what to do and waited for the signal.

She heard his voice in her head. "Pull up! Up, up up!"

And she did, grasped the chain in a fist and hauled herself upward, through the thick soup of the water, up to the light air where her body became heavier and over the mouth of the trap door until she could roll onto the side and pant, choking water, free of the abysmal grave.

The trap door closed. She sat on top of it. It collapsed again and she fell through.

This time, as she waited in the water for the signal, something changed. For the first time, it was not the Primarch's voice she heard. It was an exotic lilt, a wonderful honeyed voice that spoke to her only in private.

"Lightning," the Pulsian sang. "Where are you?"

The soldier's chest ached and she was flooded with misery, with desperation. Memories saturated her brain. She remembered it all. The voice, the smile, the image she'd held onto. She attempted to move but was frozen. Her arms and legs refused to obey.

"Where are you, Light?" The voice again. "I'm waiting for you. Up here!"

She wanted to cry in frustration. At last – at last –her fantasy made real, the woman she'd hoped would come to save her was waiting.

"Pull up, Claire!" The huntress shouted. "Pull up! Pull up!"

And with that, her limbs were her own again and she gripped the chain, furiously pumped through the water, soaring up toward the surface, breaking through and landing atop the mouth of the trap door.

But the cell was empty. She whirled about, searched for the source of the voice. Where was she? And her name, and her name...

"Fang?" The soldier's voice was diminutive, broken between coughs.

The silence was her companion; the woman had vanished.

The heavy vault door opened and a soldier emerged from the mouth of it. She stood in front of her with her rifle at ease. Two soldier's followed with their rifles pointed at Claire's head, red laser sights danced along her face. The lead soldier looked down at her.

"What do you do when you hit the water?"

Claire sat motionless and quiet, her puffy eyes fixed on the floor. Spots swam behind her eyes as a fist struck her jaw.

"What do you do when you hit the water?"

Tears trailed down her cheeks but Claire was oblivious to them.

"Pull up," she said.

The soldier nodded. "Good. What do you do when you hit the water?"

"Pull up," she repeated.

"What day is it?" The soldier asked.

"I don't know," Claire replied.

Another ferocious punch. She lilted to the side and recovered, her vision slightly fogged.

"What day is it?"

"What day do you want it to be?" Claire asked.

"It's Sunday," the SANCTUM soldier said.

"It's Sunday," Claire aped.

"What do you do when you hit the water?"

"Pull up," she said without hesitation. And her mantra continued:

"Pull up, pull up no matter what."

OOO

To Be Continued...


	8. Genesis

Semper Eadem

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: END GAME SPOILERS!

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: M = Graphic Violence

A/N: WARNING: THERE IS TORTURE in this chapter. Gory and graphic albeit brief. What can I say? My version of Dysley and his minions is extraordinarily sadistic.

A special thank you to Oerba Yun Fang who beta-read this chapter for me and forced me to do the much needed task of reworking some of the scenes!

OOO

Her eyes opened by degrees: little slits that let the light in and slowly focused. Waves of consciousness seeped in; the milky, vague night sharpened and became clear. She felt weightless, a bit lightheaded but it wasn't unpleasant. There was something she was forgetting, always forgetting. How did she get there? Her mind was blank. She was looking for something, she was certain, but she couldn't remember what.

Fang stood in the centre living space of one of the houses in Oerba, the house that used to belong to the matron. The moon shone onto the staircase inviting spectators to the roof. Seduced by its magnetism, she climbed the stairs and headed for the rooftop garden.

Vanille was asleep on the bench in front of her beside a floating purple cie'th stone. She appeared wonderfully peaceful, her lower lip protruding in sleep; a heavy lock of auburn hair had fallen over her eyes. Her charming rosy cheeks were full. Her face was cherubic, exotic as she'd always been. Fang's chest swelled with possessive pride.

"Hey stranger," a voice sounded behind her.

Fang whipped around. It was the soldier.

"Hey," was all her cotton mind could manage, stuck in the syrupy haze of her half-consciousness and overwhelmed by all that she saw.

Behind Lightning was a long table filled with plates of fruit. In the centre was a golden plate with a tower of red apples that stood out among the feast. Lightning noticed her interest, turned and plucked an apple from the top of the tower. She held it out to her.

"Want one?"

Fang blinked. The soldier was naked. Vanille was naked. She looked down at her own body and discovered that she too, was nude.

"Where are we?" The huntress asked, her voice wavering.

"We're in the garden," Lightning said smiling. "I've always been here."

The soldier bit into the apple and relished it, rolled it around in her mouth to savour its sweetness. Fang advanced toward her and wrapped her fingers around the apple, hesitant to take it away.

Light grinned and tilted her head to the side. "It's delicious. Don't you want to know what it tastes like?"

The huntress nodded. The soldier cupped the Pulsian's waist and watched as the exotic beauty brought the apple to her lips with both hands and took a bite. She mimicked the way that Lightning ate it, chewed cautiously. When the apple settled into her gut, she was filled with warmth that arched up into her chest and low into her abdomen, coiling deep. The sense of peace and tranquility she'd felt was suddenly destroyed by an acute tension, an exquisite agony building up inside of her that burst through her entire being.

Her pulse hammered in her chest; heat emanated from her in waves. She recovered her composure.

"Has Vanille had some?" Fang asked; she turned to stare at her beloved friend asleep on the bench.

"Yes," the soldier nodded. "She knows more than either of us."

The huntress sauntered over to the bench and bent to place a kiss on the girl's forehead. She brushed the red-gold bangs behind her ear.

Lightning took back the apple. In a sudden wave of dread, Fang's blood turned to ice. She shivered.

The soldier's eyes narrowed, "You know what you have to do."

"Isn't there another way?"

A sharp pain seized her chest and she struggled for air in vain. Fang collapsed to her knees and her hands shot out, sliding against the soldier's bare skin and failing to find an anchor.

"Light!" The huntress croaked. "Help me!"

"The spirit is willing –truly – but the flesh is weak!" The soldier said smiling and joining Fang on her knees.

Lightning kissed the Pulsian's cheek.

"Fulfill your destiny," she said. "Become Ragnarok."

The apple morphed into a dagger and she threaded the Pulsian's fingers with her own, gripped the handle of the blade. The soldier turned it inward and flicked her bellybutton ring with the tip of it. Serenity fell over her face and she bent forward.

"She will betray you," the soldier whispered.

And she captured Fang's lips in a kiss.

The huntress was petrified; her pain suddenly dissolved. The soldier waited until Fang was placid and yanked on the dagger, plunged it into her own gut. The Pulsian looked down at the weapon; her hands were on the handle.

"No!" She screamed.

"Abandon your attachments," Lightning said, her voice deepening. "What you love doesn't matter."

Fang let go of the dagger, finally aware. "Dysley!"

Lightning released a long, howling laugh and melted into a pile of guts. From the pulpy residues, the Primarch emerged. Dysley captured the dagger and wandered over to the sleeping Vanille.

"Don't touch her!" the huntress cried.

He gripped a fistful of the girl's hair and dragged her to her feet. She yelped from the sudden contact, bewildered by the movement. He exposed the cream-white skin of her throat and held the dagger aloft.

"Idiotic, little toy," he said and glared at her. "So easy to wind you up."

He ran the blade across Vanille's throat and cut it open.

Fang woke in a pool of cold sweat and blood; her bangs stuck heavy to her forehead. She blinked at the brightness outside, gradually took in the destruction: upturned vehicles, dead fiends, smoke and fires, a sea of dismembered corpses. She gasped. Cocoon. The architecture was unmistakable. Around her sat the wreckage of a SANCTUM aircraft, and a fire in the hull threatened to burn away the bottoms of her feet.

She pulled herself gingerly from the shattered cockpit, shrapnel and glass strewn about around her. The huntress landed on the ground and crushed her palm to her wound; Cure spells leapt from her fingertips. Her frantic eyes scanned the scene: the pilot was crushed in the twisted front seat and burning in the fire, the few passengers – SANCTUM guards – were squished under the plane's carcass. She was alone.

Her gaze lifted to the large marble building at the end of the narrow path. It was giant and mechanical, intricate beyond anything she'd ever seen and covered in long window panes. Neon lights glowed bright along the criss-crossing catwalks; flower-like ornaments adorned the elaborate structures. Eden, she thought. It had to be.

The dream returned to her perforce. _Where are we?_ _ In the garden..._

Fang bounded toward it, certainty filled her gut. Lightning was there. Vanille was there. Everyone was waiting. Ragnarok, Dysley. Everyone.

There were no fiends in the streets left alive, no obstacles to overtake. The path was painfully clear. Had it been this easy all along? She brushed the thought off, continued the long dash up to the open atrium. Now more than ever, she was convinced of what she had to do to save the people she loved.

OOO

The vault door opened and a soldier entered carrying a long silver tray, the kind she and Serah used to drink tea on. The soldier placed it gingerly in front of her. She was shivering; the temperature inside the cell had dropped dramatically. Her clothes and hair were wet. She stared with blank eyes at the tray.

Shot glasses filled with clear liquid were queued at the top, beneath the glasses were thin white lines of powder. The SANCTUM soldier pointed to the glasses.

"Drink them," he said.

She reached for one without hesitation and poured it into her mouth. Vodka. She drained the rest of the glasses.

"Now take those," the soldier said, pointing to the powder.

She paused, winced when she thought he would hit her. He didn't.

"Through your nose," he explained.

Claire bent forward with her face nearly touching the tray. A finger pinched closed one of her nostrils while she snorted a line of powder through the other. She coughed as it rushed into her system, choking on the substance. Pain shot through her sinus cavity, cut by sharp little crystals in the dust. The soldier chuckled to himself.

"Like that, do ya?" He pointed to the next line and refilled the shot glasses. "Do it again."

She obeyed, felt her control sliding away, her body slipping into a stupor.

When the tray was empty, she refused to move. Two more guards entered the cell and unchained her, dragged her from the mouth of the entrance. Her head lolled back as she was hauled across the floor. They dropped her in a large, darkened room and covered her with a cloth. She heard Dysley's voice in the distance, felt her restraint slip a little more. There was another voice, one that talked in legion with two others that she did not recognise. She wasn't concerned; she didn't care. Instead, Claire fell back and swam in her drugged delirium.

OOO

Eden was abandoned. The halls were empty, the entrances to every room and corridor unguarded. She ignored the whisper of her conscience and the overwhelming dread. If it wasn't a trap that awaited her, what horror had been done to Vanille? To Lightning? She pushed it all away.

Fang squinted as she approached a glowing blue portal in the shape of a sun. She turned, examined the corners of the empty room. Nothing there. Glass shattered beneath her boots as she stepped over the debris. Mindfully, she reached out, fingers trembling and touched the sun glyph. It rippled like water and the world around her erupted into a white-yellow flash as she was turned in and out and transported to another realm.

The room was decked in white and lined with soft blue florescent orbs that illuminated the hulking corridors. She grimaced. It had to be right, she thought, the last step of her future, the journey toward the totality of her Focus cased in the sterile, futuristic hall. What had become of Eden abandoned by man? Had the Maker redesigned it and used it for Hell? The air was thick with trepidation. What room contained the beast? If Dysley was the messenger of god, who was the devil? She shrugged the thought away and side-stepped the silver statue in the centre and entered the next room.

A light shone through the reflecting pool at the end of the catwalk; the room was in darkness except for the water's kaleidoscopic phantoms flickering on the wall. Her eyes sought out the bizarre mechanical structures turning like the internal gears of a clock. Mirrors and etched symbols stood out on the stone, hung without supports in the air. Time was marked by a loud ticking, the source of it hidden in the shadows. She jumped from the platform to the floor below, stood at the edge of the lilting water. Fang peered into the pool and frowned. There was no reflection.

"How do you like it?" He asked.

She whipped in his direction; her jaw clenched and her hand tore the staff from its holster.

"Where are they?" She growled.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," Dysley pouted, shrugging his shoulders.

She hurled Ruinga at him and he deflected the bullet-like object with his golden sceptre. The spell exploded above him and shattered one of the yellow mirrors. He chuckled as the bronze debris rained into the reflecting pool.

"You're right," he said casually. "Quite right. It's a sin to lie."

He snapped his fingers and three SANCTUM guards entered. One guard trained her rifle on the Pulsian while the others sought a place next to the reflecting pool. Dysley nodded to one of the soldiers and he removed a cloth from an altar next to him.

It should have registered quickly: the girl lying flat on her back on the altar, her wrists and ankles bound to the marble structure with metal shackles. A thin metal chain was suspended from her bellybutton like an umbilical cord and it arched up to a pulley on the ceiling where the rest of the chain plunged into the reflecting pool. Vanille sobbed and refused to look at her, terror on her face. Fang stared petrified with her mouth agape.

"Stop it!" She yelled. She watched Dysley saunter callously over to the other soldier. "You want me to be Ragnarok? I'll do it. Let her go!"

"It's not so simple, my dear," the Primarch sneered.

She threw her staff to the ground. "I'm not going to fight you. I'll transform into Ragnarok. I'll be yours and fulfil my Focus."

The Primarch bit his hand and a sudden flamboyance tinged in his gait. He felt himself harden and a jolt of pleasure ran down his spine and through his groin. "Such a willing and devoted subject! Still your tongue before I faint!"

Her vision darted from the Primarch to Vanille, tears clouding her eyes. "Last chance. Let Vanille go and I'll give you what you want."

Dysley nodded at the SANCTUM soldier beside him and watched Fang with a grin, "Dear girl, what makes you think I would ever do that?"

Before Fang could respond, the soldier pulled back another silk blanket and revealed the body underneath. Claire sat on the ground and hugged her knees. She was filthy; dirt matted her cheeks and hair. Fang called out to her and she stared back with hardened emptiness – the look of the abandoned. It left the huntress speechless. Fang took a step forward in recovery, apologies and explanations wavering at the precipice of her tongue. Dysley held a hand up to stop her.

"Ah, ah! Not so fast," he crooned. "Do you remember Yun Fang, how one transforms into the creature?"

"No," she said, her eyes fixed on Claire.

"Through pain," Dysley smiled. "Excruciating agony. Orphan suggested physical torture. But I think I have something better."

"What are you going to do?"

"Tell the little one how much you love her," he said. "This one is too far gone to listen."

"What did you do to her?"

"I suggest you heed my advice. I'm not known to be generous with my time."

She hesitated and turned to the altar, brushed Vanille's cheek. The girl was breathing hard, panting, panicked. Fang's eyes trailed over to the chain at her middle and she blanched. It was gouged inside her abdomen, buried beneath her flesh. Dysley observed them and smiled.

"Too late!" He shouted and the SANCTUM soldiers pried Fang away from Vanille's side. "And now the piece de resistance!"

He lifted his foot and kicked Claire into the reflecting pool. She twisted to the side without a hint of surprise and dropped heavily into the water, sank like a stone. Fang struggled against the SANCTUM soldiers but two of them held her arms behind her back while the other pumped a bullet into her calf. She dropped to one knee and groaned in pain. The huntress stubbornly got to her feet and tried to wrench free. The soldier shot the other leg. She collapsed to her knees with a shriek of agony.

Claire descended deeper into the pool, the training of a hundred days and nights came back to her: _Pull up! Up, up, up!_ Her eyes squinted against the violent sting of the water, located the chain floating a short distance away. Alarm welled inside of her and rose into her dazed mind. The water was thick like jelly, her limbs and mind moving slow. She had to breathe, had to breathe. Her chest tightened. She closed a fist around the chain and pulled it down. It was taut in an instant and difficult to yank. She pulled harder, wrapped arms and body around it to bring the chain down.

Fang watched in horror as the chain tensed and descended into the pool. The girl screamed, at first high-pitched and it began to lower as her gut was excavated. From Vanille's abdomen one bloodied link appeared, and then another, and another until Fang could see the meat hook attached at the end of the chain. It drew a long, fleshy intestine out, the hook brutally punctured through the crimson-stained flesh, and it stretched as the chain continued to pull. A deep plum-red organ was caught in the mess, and then another long piece of flesh. Blood spilled over the girl's torso, streamed onto the floor. The huntress screamed and cursed aloud. Vanille was quiet and twitching. Dysley cackled at the spectacle.

"Stop!" Fang shouted, her voice deepening, transforming.

Cable-thick muscles popped out of her back and along her arms, on her legs and torso. Her screaming morphed into a low, throaty roar. Her nose and jaw stretched into a feline snout. Her blood vessels dilated and her nervous system fired at twice the speed while her heart pumped faster. Organs saturated with water and mass; cells built layer upon layer of flesh-based organic armour. Her hands turned to claws, her raven-black hair into a golden mane; a tail jutted from the base of her spine. Her teeth elongated into fangs.

"Come to me, Ragnarok!" Dysley commanded. "Listen to your master!"

The beast ran toward him and leapt over the Primarch, crashing through the golden pillars and diving into the reflecting pool. He stared at the pool dim-witted, perplexed by her disobedience. In an upward jet of water, the monster emerged with a woman limp in her arms. Ragnarok deposited Claire on the floor and turned toward the altar, bewildered when she found it empty. She searched the space around it, upturned the marble structure and shattered it on the ground. Vanille was gone.

"Fang!" The girl's voice came from the platform above.

Ragnarok turned. The l'Cie stood before her: Vanille, Sazh, Snow and Hope, walking on his own. His head was bald and his face bore the deep scars of his last encounter with the Primarch. But Vanille was clean and dressed – completely unmarred.

"Lightning!" The young boy cried.

Claire was motionless on the ground, curled in the foetal position in a puddle of water. Hope and Vanille jumped from the platform and surrounded her, each of them casting Curasa. Ragnarok glared at the Primarch. The beast lumbered toward him.

He stared up at the towering beast, undaunted by his Frankenstein. "Did you like my little trick?"

She summoned a roar from deep in her gut and seized the Primarch in her claws. With her sharpened fangs, she tore at the old man's fleshy neck, chewed at the bone until the head was off and tossed the carcass into the pool. The SANCTUM soldiers retreated into the darkness and abandoned their rifles on the floor.

The ground shook violently and the l'Cie tumbled to the marble ground. Ragnarok dropped to her hands and knees. From the reflecting pool, the trinity of Orphan emerged: Father, Mother and Child. The room reverberated with their laughter. Ragnarok was infuriated by them, the bane of all of her suffering in each cycle of her life, from the moment she was born to her permanent damnation as an immortal l'Cie. She launched her body into the air, latched onto the Child's halo. Amassing her strength, she gradually ripped it from his head.

Snow cast black magic on the Father and Mother. Sazh picked up one of the SANCTUM rifles and unloaded a clip into the trinity. Hope and Vanille tended to Lightning's injuries as the soldier came to, coughing up a lungful of water. Vanille took one of the silk blankets from the floor and draped it over Lightning's shoulders.

"You alright?" Vanille asked; lifted the soldier's eyelid with her thumb, examined the size of her pupils. Normal.

Lightning nodded.

Curasa glowed at the tip of Hope's fingers and he held them up to the soldier, yelling over the din, "Follow them with your eyes."

They watched as Lightning followed them, squinting at the brightness and wincing from the commotion in front of them, the ground quaking from the fight.

The Mother's mask shattered and Ragnarok jumped back onto Orphan, pummelled the Father's face until it cracked and the red lights of his eyes faded into lifeless stone. Only the Child remained.

Sazh snatched another gun from the floor. Snow cast Thundaga in succession and the electricity caught in the reflecting pool, racing through the water-circuit. Orphan squealed from the agony. Ragnarok bit the Child's face and chewed, dug her claws on into cheeks. A deep roar ripped from her throat as a wave of magic erupted from her palms. The shockwave exploded through Orphan's body, crumbling him in half, and the beast disappeared with the god into the pool of water.

A wave pitched upward, launched a geyser-jet that sprayed into the air. Fang fell from the tip of it and crashed onto the marble floor. Vanille scrambled to help her to her feet. The ground violently trembled. Snow cursed as he was knocked off-balance. The ceiling splintered and a chunk of stone plummeted to the floor, burst into shards upon impact.

"We gotta get the hell outta here," Sazh yelled. He grabbed Hope's wrist and pulled him to his feet.

Snow fumbled to stand and followed the men to the platform. Vanille and Fang eased Lightning up and the girl tied the blanket around the soldier's neck to keep her damp body warm. The girl turned to the huntress with an enigmatic expression.

"I'll wait for you," she said softly.

Fang nodded and watched Vanille scurry beneath the safety of the arched doorway.

The huntress stepped toward the soldier, mindful of her shock. Her hands cupped the woman's cheeks, tilted her face up. Calm fell over the soldier's eyes despite the chaos around them. Another block of stone fell from the ceiling and broke on the floor; metal scraped and clattered to the ground. They could risk it: they were still immortal, still l'Cie. Her thumbs brushed Lightning's cheeks. A soft smile quirked at the soldier's lips.

Time was collapsing, crumbling like the space around them, twisting into oblivion. Vanille stood atop the platform and called to the huntress. A thundering crack tore the dome from the top of Eden, exposed them to the night sky. Wind whipped their hair from their faces. Neither woman moved; Fang bit her lip.

Hope watched the two from afar, convinced of their insanity. The building dissolved around them, their lives preserved by a narrow miss of falling debris and luck. His cheeks flushed hot with fury.

"Come on!" He yelled.

Light turned her head and met his gaze, bit her lip. Her resolve was as fragmented as her spirit. She looked back at Fang, her eyes glazed with tears.

"We should go," she yelled, her short bangs whipped about her face in a fiery mane.

The huntress brushed her thumb against the soldier's lips, a storm in her green eyes the nature of which she would never tell.

"In case we don't see each other again... "

Fang's voice was swallowed as she pulled Light's lips toward her own and captured the soldier's bottom lip beneath hers. Lightning tilted her head back, defences shattered tier by tier and responded in kind. She gripped Fang's upper arms, her fingertips digging into the flesh. Hesitating, their lips broke apart and the world filtered in, shouts from above their head filled their ears. They were floating; the ground had disappeared from under their feet. Sazh, Snow and Hope were hovering miles above them.

They both rose through the air and the huntress reached out, clutched the edge of the platform where Vanille kept her body anchored. Lightning grasped Fang's other hand and horror swept over her face.

"Fang?" She yelled, her eyes clouding with terror. Somehow, she already knew what the Pulsians had planned.

The huntress ran her thumb over the back of the soldier's hand, stole one last look at her frightened azure eyes. Closing her eyes, she yanked her hand back and Lightning sailed into the updraft, seized by Snow's bear-grip on her forearm. Hope took her other hand to steady her. They looked down at the women from Pulse, helpless to reach them. Dread overwhelmed them all as they witnessed the revelation unfolding.

Vanille stared up at the huntress, kissed the corner of her lips. A tear escaped the older Pulsian's eye.

"Are you ready?" The girl asked.

Fang nodded.

Their eyes locked, fingers linked and bodies morphed into yellow-white fusion as they became one: a terrifying demon to plunder the world. As Eden shattered, they dove into Gran Pulse; charged across the lava filled rivers and a stream of liquid magma shot upward. They guided it to the base of Cocoon and the body of the demon exploded into light. A flash-freeze fixed the jet of lava, and the ice branched out in all directions as solidified to form the trunk of a tree. Cocoon was held aloft – precious, forbidden fruit – suspended mid-descent by the trunk of ice.

It was the last thing they all remembered, the lightning-flash of the lava and Cocoon petrified atop its base. Their world turned to blackness and purgatory; a half-consciousness flooded their minds. It was dream-like but not a dream, not a nightmare, but a primordial id flooded with desires that shouted into an abyss of nothingness. When at last the sun was upon them and the crystal was in pieces at their feet, their loves were reunited– Serah and Dazh emerged from the violent mess. Snow and Sazh were at peace.

Lightning was relieved; her sister was unharmed. Her mission had been a success and her family was whole again. But like Hope, she found herself displaced, with and without purpose, fragmented. Hope made a promise to look for his father. Sazh insisted the boy stay with him and his son. Serah and Snow offered to have him stay with them. The soldier remained silent, offered some semblance of comfort to him. But her mind was elsewhere: on the fate of the Pulse l'Cie. Were they dead? Would she live to see them again? Acid flamed in her gut.

Soldiers and survivors littered the Pulsian fields, families and individuals shook and wailed with fear. Some wandered aimless and disoriented, unsure of what to do or where to go. They were all hollow now, vessels waiting to be filled. Nothing was certain – not anymore.

Light regarded the devastation on the field below. She stared at the frozen base that held Cocoon aloft. Where they somewhere in the ice? The weary survivors crawled around like insects; the soldiers were out of formation, left and right, all vacant. Fang's words came unbidden into her mind.

_In case we don't see each other again..._

Time was lost. Everything had evaporated, as though it never existed. Her home, her life, her love – vanished in an instant. Her hand covered her mouth; her eyes squeezed shut as a sob escaped her throat.

It was all over.

OOO

To Be Continued...


	9. Resurrection

SEMPER EADEM

Disclaimers: FFXIII is not mine, I'm not selling this blab la bla. Just a little fanfiction.

Spoilers: none, if you've gotten this far, you know how the game ends. This chapter begins my little story of what happens POST-GAME.

Pairing: Fang/Lightning & Fang/Vanille

Rating: This chapter is T

Author's Notes: You'll notice I've changed the title. Something about it wasn't working for me... couldn't tell ya what it is, I was just sick of it :P The translation of the title is "Always/Ever the Same" in Latin. No relation to the Baudelaire novel.

OOO

New Cocoon Women's Clinic

15 Years After the Death of Orphan

Sunday –Day of Liberty Celebrations – 10:00

Life swarmed and meandered through the downtown core: children played in the sandbox universe of the park playground; mothers watched from the benches, some of them with infants in their arms. Families gathered in the restaurants and confectionary stands, gathering sweets made on the anniversary of the birth of New Cocoon. Flags, hats and knick-knack paraphernalia hung in store windows. Banners with New Cocoon's slogans of liberty and perseverance hung from doorframes and along the fences of restaurant patios and gazebos. Loudspeakers littered around the map of the city blared the New Cocoon national anthem. And across the street, in a blocky industrial building just a few feet from the hospital, a young girl walked through the revolving doors of a clinic, her loose windbreaker hugged close to her chest.

Her heels clicked along the linoleum floor as she approached the front desk. There was no requirement in New Cocoon to prove citizenship, being human was enough. Health care was essential. A redheaded nurse donning a white uniform and matching pillbox hat tore her gaze from her desk and narrowed her eyes at her. Recognition. A bit of contempt swirled in her hard green eyes but she waved her away with a hand, told her to wait. She wandered over to the plastic chairs and sat, plucked an old magazine from the dilapidated pile of parenting literature and pretended to read. Her eyes peered over the tops of the pages.

A toddler wailed in her mother's arms and the woman bounced the baby on her knee until the young girl was quiet. A little boy ran from his mother's lap to the abacus and lettered building blocks set aside for the children to play with. Countless young women sat with distended, pregnant bellies, some of them seeming far too young to be faced with the prospect of parenthood, many of them alone with no one around them. A man and woman sat with grins to their ears holding a long piece of film, fawning over a series of ultrasound pictures.

Her name was called.

She entered the florescent-bulb-lit sterile room, inhaled the empty rubbing alcohol scent. Her hands began to tremble; nausea threatened at the back of her throat. The white lab-coat doctor sat in front of the gurney, garish metal stirrups at the end of it.

"Have a seat," the doctor said.

The girl sat on the gurney, hugged her chest. Her body was shaking. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"How are you feeling?" The doctor asked.

The girl shrugged, avoided the doctor's glare. The doctor tucked a wad of fuzzy blonde hair behind her ear.

"Have you given thought to the procedure?" She asked.

The girl nodded slowly, tears welling in her eyes.

"I'm going to tell you exactly how it's done," the doctor continued. "And if you still want to go through with it, we'll schedule a date for you."

The girl remained silent. The doctor put her hand on the girl's knee. She flinched.

"I know how difficult this can be," the doctor began. "An abortion is a very serious matter. I can put you in contact with several clinic therapists if you need someone to talk to."

The young woman nodded.

"I'm going to need to examine you first," the doctor said. "See where the pregnancy is at and if the procedure is still viable."

Tears fell from the girl's eyes as she reached for the zipper at her neck. She dragged the zipper down and opened her jacket. The doctor sagged back into her chair, eyes wide with horror. A light flashed on the plastic detonator, wires snared in and out of the straps of explosive dynamite. The girl fumbled for the trigger and uncovered the red plastic safety on the switch. She finally met the doctor's gaze, sniffed in between sobs.

"Please don't," the doctor whimpered.

"God is great," the girl whispered resolutely.

The shockwave tore through the windows and sent shattered debris flying through the streets, into the flesh of bystanders. The rubble flew into the playground and rained down into the sand, onto the benches, cracked the windows of local shops and restaurants. The force of the explosion sent the vehicles careening into the sidewalks and the fields of the park, into a tree that cracked and pitched to the side. An upturned fire hydrant surged with water, a lamppost collapsed on its side. A cloud of smoke carried into the air; fire raced through the carved out recesses of the eviscerated building. Paper and fragments from the blast floated to the ground. Chaos in an instant, history in a minute, fear in a plume of dust.

OOO

New Cocoon Military Base North (Alpha)

15 Years After the Death of Orphan (ADO)

Sunday –Day of Liberty Celebrations – 12:00

The call came in on her lunch break as she was bent over her desk strewn with paperwork. The emergency units had already been deployed, the army sent to investigate and cordon the area from the public. Reserve forces acted as the local police, marine and SEAL graduates formed an elite core of investigators, combat negotiators and imperialists in the Steppe. A select few – her outfit – were the active agents at the top: espionage, defence and weapons specialists, experts in domestic terrorism.

The threat of foreign terrorism dissolved with the dissolution of Old Cocoon into Gran Pulse. There was, however, no shortage of dissenters to the new life: New Cocoon, and humanity's new beginning. Who would take charge? What kind of government was to be had? What was needed to survive? Who would be held responsible for collecting resources? The list was endless. There was one thing that she and the PSICOM army had made clear: the L'Cie were to disappear into anonymity, not to be disturbed or publicly identified as former L'Cie.

She landed a class A clearance in the New Cocoon army – formerly PSICOM – as well as one of the highest positions on the terrorism task force. In the first few years, her job was painful but regimented; everything went according to rank and file order, nothing was amiss or out of place. But it was in the last year that a fanatic group rose from the underground, claiming to know the future and the will of god. And rallied by the trauma of Old Cocoon's destruction, by famine, by the sacrifices made to adjust to and inhabit the land of Gran Pulse, the Children of Nabaat ushered in an alarmingly powerful flock.

She'd never been particularly religious: couldn't stomach the great missteps in logic required to want a benevolent master or a totalitarian state. What kind of Maker designed humans with a propensity for hunger and curiosity, moulded knowledge into a piece of fruit and then demanded no one eat it? There was a word for that in the earthbound world: sadism. The hypocrisy of the churches served no better in winning her favour; fire and brimstone and scandal were less than an attractive resume for gaining followers. But more importantly, she was no one's slave.

The phone rang.

She answered it dispassionately. "Farron."

"You watching the news?" It was her brother-in-law, the new secretary of defence.

"No," she replied. "I'm neck deep in paperwork thanks to one of your trigger-happy boys in the reserves."

"He's being dealt with, I'll have you know," came his drawled reply. "There was an explosion in the downtown women's clinic."

She cursed under her breath.

"Bomb squad's on the scene right now."

"And?" Her brow arched.

"It's still too early," he said, exhaling a sigh. "But CON's already taking credit for it."

Lightning opened one of the drawers in the desk and groped for the remote. She seized it in a fist and activated the flat panel screen on the wall. The familiar drone of the NC News – her TV was always switched to the news – filled the room. Scrolls beneath the chaotic picture read in violent red and white: breaking news in the downtown core, explosion at women's clinic, twenty-five dead. A news anchor rattled off statistics, made a passing acknowledgement of the damaged hospital right next to the small clinic. The live feed switched back to the newsroom where the female anchor introduced another reporter in the field, this one directly broadcast from one of CON's churches in the southern quarter of the city, adjacent to the New Cocoon High Court.

The images cast discoloured shadows across Lightning's face, deepened the lines of worry permanently etched by time.

"You watching it?" Snow said on the other end of the line. She'd almost forgotten about him.

"Yeah," she said breathless.

The anchor held his microphone up a woman in the congregation, her forehead slicked with sweat, her face a mask of ecstasy.

"Maker is with us this day," she said, her voice wavering with emotion. "The Children of Nabaat are his children. He will guide us to the new world. This world is only temporary."

Light ran a hand through her hair and sighed as the woman continued."Bunch of lunatics."

"They sound like the Primarch," Snow said and winced when he realised his slip. The line went silent.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't worry about it," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "It's been a long time. And besides... if these guys turn out to be half as fanatic as he was, we're in trouble."

"The Maker's children are with us now," the woman on the TV continued. "The Children of Nabaat have saved them. That dreadful murderer and all her murderous followers drown in the lakes of hell! The archangels of Nabaat are in New Cocoon to stay, and the Maker will guide our mortal hands toward his divine will!"

"You're hearing what I'm hearing, right?" Snow asked.

"Think that counts as probable cause?" She answered.

The TV drama continued. The male anchor brought the heavy microphone back to his own lips,

"Are the Children of Nabaat responsible for this tragedy?" He asked.

The zealot sneered at him, "god works in mysterious ways!"

"It's probably a good idea for you to get down to the clinic," Snow said. "Get whatever information you can from the reserves and the special task force unit."

"I don't think it's useful to have so many guns around the crime scene," Light said sharply. "The damage is already done. Get more guns out into the Steepe. Just get me some competent detectives and an engineer."

"I already have one in mind," he said. She imagined the smug smile on his face.

"Who?"

OOO

Downtown Square

Year: 15 ADO

Sunday –Liberty Day – 09:45

Hope Estheim tied the new ascot around his neck, the colourful patterns of the New Cocoon flag on the front. He removed his pocket mirror from his pants, observed the adorning scarf from each side, regarded his reflection with a wide grin.

"Do you like it?" His young stepbrother asked.

"It's awesome," he dutifully replied. "Perfect for today."

"We gonna go hunt some fiends?" His fourteen-year-old voice was transitioning into a low, tranquil tone.

"Of course!" Hope exclaimed. "I've been looking forward to it all week."

They turned as their old man walked toward them carrying a Liberty Day special: spicy Gorgonopsid rolls in sweet barbeque sauce, a dish that resembled the change in diet in the year that New Cocoon was settled. They each took their share; Hope smiled as he nodded his gratitude toward his stepfather. It was rare that they spent much time together since he'd been hired by PSICHEM & Securities, shut away in the florescent-lit laboratory or relegated to a classified test site in the Steppe. Each time he saw his younger brother, the boy looked more robust, more of the thick athletic man that his father was when he was young. And his father – stricken by the trauma they all shared –had succumbed to gray; his once full black afro and beard devolved into cropped white fuzz on his head and jowls.

"Where do you boys wanna go today?" Sazh asked, popping a morsel of the chopped Gorgonopsid roll into his mouth.

"Vallis Media is good for shooting," Dajh replied.

Hope hesitated, "Vallis Media will be full of people today, mostly tourists. Same with the Springs. I say we go to the Northern Expanse."

The old man nodded, "Any weapons of choice?"

The young boy grinned, "AK-47 with an extended mag and suppressor."

He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for his older brother's admiration. Rewarded with silence, he frowned.

"What do you got?" Dajh asked.

A smug smile formed on the man's lips, "Crossbow with exploding arrows. PSICHEM & Securities' special issue."

The young boy cursed. Hope patted him on the back.

"When you get drafted, I'll put in a good word with your superiors," Hope said.

"You'll have all the toys you could ever want soon enough," Sazh chuckled.

"What'd you bring, dad?" The boy asked.

"Oh nuthin'," the old man shrugged. "Just old friends."

Hope laughed as the old man revealed the two submachine guns strapped on either side of his chest beneath his jacket.

"That's some talent, old man," Hope chortled. "I could never get the hang of dual-wielding SMGs."

"Age hasn't kicked my ass yet!" Sazh smiled and finished off his meal.

The teenager devoured that last scrapes of his food and fished in his pocket for bills, "Dessert?"

The two older men nodded. At fourteen, Dajh's stomach was bottomless.

"Whachya thinkin?" Sazh asked his son.

"Something sweet," he replied.

Hope chuckled, "You're a great help."

The boy smiled, "Okay, how about something sweet and cold?"

"Ice wine?" Hope offered.

He rolled his eyes, "Ice-cream!"

"Alright," Hope said, nodding in approval. "But I'm buying."

There was a bakery on the corner of Sixth and Crystal Avenue that doubled as an ice-cream parlour and waffle-house. It was a private business, one owned by a family descended from Old Cocoon, as most businesses in the main city were. Gone were the corporations and the oligarchic business practices of Old Cocoon; in New Cocoon free-market capitalism was open to all private entrepreneurs that wanted to try their hand at a unique invention, idea or talent and transform it into a commodity. _Jesse's_ was such a place: the local hangout for teenagers and parents in search of leisure time with their children.

Hope reached for the door and his eyes flicked up to the window: the Liberty Day special was advertised on white cardboard and multicoloured markers. It was a sundae streaked with the national colours of New Cocoon, deep fried and topped with honey. Dajh licked his lips. The three men wandered inside.

The bakery turned restaurant had a nostalgic decor: the floor was tiled in black and white checkers, the walls hung with restored antiques salvaged from Old Cocoon's fall. The circular tables were surrounded by bright plastic upholstered chairs and paired with their equally red plastic booths off in the corners. A jukebox played in the corner casting neon light and classic rock music into the air. Neither of the men had been there before but like the rest of the crowd at _Jesse's_, they were quickly seduced by the atmosphere, their spirits lifted by the hypnotic joy of the decor and the people rapt in splendour.

"Hey you!" Came the crass call from behind the counter, shattering the dream.

Hope looked up and found the man – one of the owners – staring at him. He pointed to himself.

"No, not you," The man barked, eyes narrowed. He gestured with his finger. "You two."

Dajh and Sazh stepped out from behind Hope.

"Yeah, you two," he said. "Get out!"

Hope's mouth hung agape. "What? Why?"

"We don't serve niggers here!" the man yelled.

Dajh immediately bowed his head to the ground, his cheeks flamed hot. The old man put a hand on his stepson's shoulder.

"C'mon boy," Sazh said.

"No, wait –" Hope shrugged the hand from his shoulder and his glare cut into the man in front of him. "That's my dad. How can you say –"

Before he could finish, the man continued his harangue, "Then I guess you're a nigger too. Get out!"

The entire parlour set eyes upon them, the music which seemed to carry heavily into the air just moments before, was reduced to a thin dry wheeze. No one was talking. Sazh's hand tugged on Hope's shoulder again, Dajh was already halfway out the door. Hope staggered backward, eyes wide with fear and confusion as his stepfather pulled him through the doorway.

On the sidewalk, the noises of the city flooded back into their consciousness. Dajh had his hands in his pockets and his head lowered as he kicked the dust. An upward flick of his eyes caught his father's gaze and a knowing glance passed between them. Hope stood dumbfounded on the street, incredulous and wounded. All around him the flag of New Cocoon waved in the wind – large and small – suspended from every store and window and in the hands of passersby. From the loudspeakers came the national anthem and the lyrics rejoiced the freedom of New Cocoon's citizens. The banners suspended from shop windows and curio stands all had the word 'liberty' inscribed in red: red for the blood spilled by the Old Cocoon disaster. Who knew better than he, his stepfather and stepbrother the price paid for their freedom when his stepbrother was held captive by the SANCTUM army, when Hope and his stepfather fought side-by-side and were tortured by the fal'Cie?

Somewhere in the din of the mad celebration was the rumour of the pious: the race marked by the curse of Cain was responsible for the fall of Old Cocoon. The blood of Cain was the blood of monsters. What was undecided was the mark itself: what was it? A symbol? A scar? Tattoos had been outlawed within the last year as a result of the paranoia. But one idea seemed to puncture through all others and play upon human insecurity with precise and deadly flair: Cain's mark was a mark of race, a mark of visible difference, a mark of darkness. It was only a rumour, Hope had thought, the vile vitriol of paranoid people on the edge, one that would dissipate once their civilization recovered from their trauma. Instead, it had grown.

Tears glossed Hope's eyes as he was lost in reverie. The sound of his stepbrother's voice dissolved his monologue.

"I wanna go home."

A thundering clap reverberated through the air and beneath their feet. Heads whipped in the direction of the ominous sound. From between the half-built high-rise buildings a fireball twisted into the sky and collapsed into itself, pillowed by a geyser of dust and debris. Windows shattered in the buildings beside the calamity and though neither of the men could see the origin of the blast, a torrent of filth and frantic pedestrians flowed from the mouth of the street, fleeing the peril at their backs.

Sazh cursed aloud and turned to his stepson, "What the hell was that?"

Their eyes were still focused, unblinking, on the sky, on the dust cloud collecting in the air, on the recent memory of the blast-noise and all the confusion and panic of its aftermath. Thick, plum-black smoke billowed into the air as a fire ate away the remnants of the blast.

People inside of _Jesse's_ spilled from the door, curious and half-horrified at what they'd heard and felt.

"We need to get out of here," Hope said firmly.

He reached for the old man's wrist and pulled him along the sidewalk while his stepbrother took the lead and guided them home. Whatever happened, they would find it on the twelve o'clock news.

OOO

N.C. Women's Clinic

Year: 15 ADO

Sunday –13:00

The truck was dark, lit feebly by electronic light bulbs of green and red, blue cathode-lit hard drives and the LED displays of flat-screens. The fixed equipment jolted and clinked as the large tires of the armoured truck rolled over the debris of glass, stone and metal splayed along the street. The passengers swayed with each manoeuvre, clinging to the cloth belts suspended from the ceiling for securing cargo. There were two Guardian Corps blitz soldiers, one ComTech expert, three investigative PSICOM agents and their leader: General Claire Farron.

The ComTech expert, Ziggy, was an eclectic mix of computer and artistic genius with a severe cannabis habit. He needed it to function, he claimed, and on delivery of his invention and its revolutionary promise, his request was granted even at work. Ziggy, named for the discarded zig zag packaging littered around his office, had developed a complex video-capture system that recreated broken architecture in real time. Old Cocoon was catalogued both in his mind and his computer hard drives. Every fault and cross-beam was written into his digital sculpture, and from his careful cartography, a vast expanse of New Cocoon was erected in near-perfect replica of its predecessor in less than a decade.

Throughout the city, download stations preserved changes in zone boundaries and structures, manually updated by construction and city workers. If a zoning area changed or a new building was made, the contractor or NC city appointee was required to input the co-ordinates and record the visual progress of the structure. When a building collapsed, Ziggy's team was deployed to the site, downloaded the latest data and reconstructed the broken edifice. The placement of the scraps and the nature of the damage recorded after the collapse were compared to the original building plan, like a fingerprint. Where the two groups of information diverged was the cause of the building's fall. Whether it was a fire, an architectural oversight or a manmade explosion, Ziggy would find it.

Another bump sent a wave of nausea through the hull.

"How many corpses you think we just mowed over?" One of the Guardian Corps soldiers ribbed his teammate.

General Farron cut the man a glare. The marines and the SEALS were still full of sadistic, macho bullshit. Nothing had changed since her training days as a new recruit in the Guardian Corps.

The vehicle stopped and as they burst through the open hatch, the din of the world outside invaded the hull: ambulance sirens and the shouts of local marines formed a shield from the public. Recon teams yelled into the debris in vain, listening for responses; teams with sonar and thermal vision scoured the lifeless stone and twisted metal. General Farron caught a glimpse of one of the bodies pulled from the wreckage, painted ghost-white with drywall dust. The paramedics swarmed over it. Perhaps it was still alive. She turned to Ziggy sitting inside the cargo hold of the truck.

"What channel are you on?" She asked.

"One-four-zero-point-one-five," he replied activating the transmitter and extending the antennae atop the truck with the click of an icon on his laptop.

The inside of the truck lit up with flat screens and each slotted machine roared to life. Farron adjusted her slender headset.

"Ziggy, do you copy?"

The line went silent and then, accompanied by static, "Copy loud and clear!" Ziggy had a tendency to yell into his mic. "Bringing up a map o' dah city."

"Where's the data node?" She asked.

"Hold yer horses, woman!" Ziggy replied, his accent thick. "Dah memory is low and dah network is shit in dis tin can."

The Guardian Corps and PSIDET agents waved away the marines encroaching on them, presented their badges for clarification. The recon and paramedic teams watched the M-16 wielding Corps soldiers with mild trepidation.

"Got it!" Ziggy's voice crackled on the line. "Git to dah hospital next to dah clinic and look for-ah fusebox in dah alleyway. Got a picture o' lightnin' on it. Wall o' dah hospital buildin'."

"Copy," she replied. She gestured toward her group and they headed through the twisted shrapnel jungle to the unmarred wall of the hospital building. A grey fusebox sat next to a rotting green dumpster. Farron wandered over to it, opened her pocket computer and attached the retracting cable to the data node inside the fusebox. She downloaded the last known version of the city's landscape to her computer and transferred the file to Ziggy.

"Alright!" Ziggy rejoiced. "Got the original. Now 'ah need to see what broke."

The Guardian Corps guards lead them back to the mouth of the debris where the clinic stood torn open at the gut, alive with half of it disintegrated to dust.

"Start recording," Farron instructed the team. She brought out her own laser camera and placed her protective goggles on, strapped the oxygen mask to her face.

When activated, the device used a penetrating beam of light –invisible to the human eye – to catalogue the topography and depth of the environment within the range of its flash. In addition to recording the landscape down to the location of a pebble, the camera continued to record in between flashes, charting the environment from different angles, building a database within Ziggy's citywide communication system. As the soldiers recorded what the camera saw, the software on Ziggy's laptop rebuilt the crime scene in real time.

"Whoo!" Ziggy chimed. "Hellova mess!"

"Can you tell me anything useful?" General Farron clenched her jaw.

"Itsa bomb for sure," he said. "Can tell ya daht right now."

"Thanks, captain obvious," quipped one of the Guardian Corps soldiers.

"Proceeding to the lobby," Farron announced. "Stay in formation."

The lobby reeked of blood, smoke and decay strong enough to infiltrate the masks they wore and contaminate the oxygen with the smell. One of the PSIDET agents shook with a coughing fit. Dust fell from the gouged upper floor and caught the scrutiny of one of the Guardian soldiers. He craned his neck upward and switched his goggles to thermal vision.

The other Guardian soldier regarded the sensitive PSIDET agent with contempt, "What did you expect? Smell of roses?"

One of the PSIDET investigators cursed as he stepped on a dismembered hand. Lightning ignored them, her eyes trained on the destruction around her.

"Talk to me, Ziggy," she said.

"Runnin' quick simulations," he said. "Looks like dah explosion came outward. Like from one-a dem rooms on dah east side."

"What rooms?" She asked.

"Dere's tree of dem don't exist no more cuz of dah blast," he answered. "You see dah information desk undar dah collapse second floor?"

She looked to the left, a chunk of the second floor linoleum sat on an incline above an indecipherable object, what must have been, she gathered, the reception desk.

"Yeah, I see it."

"Go east down dah hall till you see dah biggest gap in dah wall."

She lead the team east while one of the Guardian Corps soldiers stayed behind. Another pouring of dust from the second floor caught his eye. It was too noisy to hear anything in particular. He manoeuvred over to the broken patch of flooring and removed his ballistics knife. While supporting his rifle, he used the knife to climb the slippery incline.

The open area Light found herself in was reduced to rubble. The walls on each side of it had been blown out, half of the doorframe remained however precarious while the metal tables, plastic chairs and long cabinets were tossed into the distance or upturned and disfigured. Their cameras flashed incessantly to capture it all.

"Readins say it's 'dere," Ziggy said. "All dah damage started in dat spot."

"Are you sure?" Light asked.

"Positive," he answered. "I run over one hundred 'tousand simulations at dah same time on other locations. Dah damage don't match. It matches dere."

A PSIDET agent bent toward a piece of scrap metal, the tiny bulb on the front of it shattered and its form twisted. She picked it up with a gloved hand.

"General?"

Lightning turned, "What is it?"

"I think I've got something."

A gunshot rang through the air. They all dropped to the ground. Lightning reached for her gunblade. The Guardian Corps soldier knelt in front of them and switched his goggles to thermal.

"Maker on a chocobo, what dah hell was dat?" Ziggy yelled on the line.

"Gunshot," Light replied. "Locating target."

"Dis some bullshit now," Ziggy mumbled ambling forward in the truck. He reached the button for the hatch and closed it shut. Scrambling back to his computer, he activated the electronic parascope hanging from the hull. The device zoomed into the damaged building.

"What direction it came from?" He asked.

"Don't know yet," Farron replied.

Ziggy spotted a motionless body atop the second floor of the dilapidated clinic; it was dressed in Guardian Corps heavy assault armour. Next to it, a figure emerged from the rubble wearing civilian clothes. The man walked to the edge of the floor and put his hands out and his legs together in the shape of a 'T'.

"Got some shit happenin' on dah roof," Ziggy said. "Somebody look like he gonna jump."

The Guardian Corps soldier leading them waited for Farron's order.

"You see anything else, Ziggy?" She asked.

"Negative, General," he replied.

She signalled for the soldier to proceed. He made it three steps before a bullet tore through his helmet and splattered crimson brain-bisque on the pale concrete wall. The General cursed.

"Gunfire's coming from the opposite side," she relayed it covertly into the headpiece, unsure if the man on the second floor could hear her. "I need you to be certain when you tell me something!"

Several more gunshots bellowed through the air as the recon soldiers and paramedics were struck.

Ziggy adjusted his parascope and zoomed into the building across the street, next to the open park. It was a construction site, covered in scaffolds and industrial cranes. He scanned the structure slowly, charting the map of the area in his mind. A glint of light caught his eye and he intensified the zoom lens. Waiting in the corner of a wooden scaffold was a plain-clothes civilian with a scoped sniper rifle.

"You got a damn sniper," he said into his com.

"Where?" Farron asked.

"Construction site beside dah park, southwest o' you. He up in a scaffold. You come out, you dead."

She cursed.

"What do we do?" He asked.

She considered it a moment. "Patch me through to Alpha base."

"Copy dat."

The line beeped as the signal transferred to the north end of the city. The answer came, "Alpha base."

"General Claire Farron reporting. I am pinned by a sniper in the downtown area. Requesting ghost support."

"Location?"

"The construction site near Crystal Park. Sniper is hiding in the wooden scaffolding."

Static crackled on the line, "Farron? This is General Amodar. What happened?"

"Investigating possible terrorist activity in the Women's Clinic bombing. Pinned down by a sniper. Requesting support."

"I'll send a Huey and get you outta there," he said.

"Negative," she replied. "We're in a civilian area and I want this bastard alive. We already have a few casualties. Send ghosts into the construction site but don't kill him."

"Roger that. Over and out."

Ziggy patched back into the line, frantic and cursing. "Git back to dah truck now! I gonna cover you from dah street!"

"Ziggy, are you crazy?"

"Man on roof gotta grenade. He pull dah pin!" Ziggy tore one of the heavy assault rifles from the rack inside the hull and opened the hatch at the back. Farron heard him scream at the driver to get closer to the clinic. Bullets bounced from the armoured truck.

"Everybody head toward the truck now!" She shouted and tossed a smoke bomb into the street.

As the group peeled themselves from the wall and ran through the smoke-cloud on the pavement, she emptied a clip into the direction of the scaffold, joined Ziggy in his effort to keep the sniper in cover. The truck clumsily swerved out in front of them, the hatch ready to swallow the General and the PSIDET agents. They leapt into the hull and Farron slammed the shutter closed.

The grenade exploded and sent the truck lurching forward until it tipped on its side and rolled upside-down, the engines protesting not with a roar, but a hiss that evaporated into the air. They were all knocked out on impact, crashing first onto the roof, and then the floor of the upturned truck. The second explosion had finished what the first started and the structure crumbled to the ground, ceasing to exist.

OOO

Location: Unknown

Year: Unknown

Time: Unknown

Awareness crept in by degrees, invaded her mind with lethargy. The air was saturated with déjà vu; she'd been in the same spot but she couldn't remember how long or how often she'd returned. Always in the same place, reality knit from the shadows and fog around her, the same indigo light. It looked distinctly like the Tower, the one she'd fallen through floor after floor plummeting toward the earth before she was rescued, plucked out of the air by a white knight.

There were times when the shadows moved, when the fog shifted as though phantoms disguised themselves behind it, watching her. They rushed by in audible gusts in and out, fumbling away in the shadows each time she got too close to discovering them. Did they know how much she longed to join them? She nearly caught one, but it slipped away before she could ask it to turn around. It was somehow familiar, a bright silver shock of hair atop its head. She'd known someone like that.

The ghosts' visits had become routine; each had their own distinct feeling. The silver-head filled her with a desire to protect it. Another taller, masculine figure brought with him a sense of ease. One was wise, another she longed desperately to see, but it eluded her. And the final phantom, the one that appeared to watch her most often, filled her with agony.

The sensation was unlike any other: a torturous, curious appetite that was always left wanting, always disappointed. She hungered for the ghost, knew it was just beyond the cloud of mist that corrupted her sight. But it constantly disappeared, cautiously evaded her.

The memorable feeling welled inside of her; it was watching in the shadows. The sensation was stronger than what she accounted for, bordered on fear. The fog peeled away from her as she wandered through it, eyes bearing into her from the abyss. It knew no language as far as she could tell, had no name. It simply existed, waiting and watching like a sniper through a scope.

"Who's out there?"

The fog parted and the shadow manifested in the dust. The image sharpened and the soldier emerged, her eyes as hardened and callous as they'd ever been. A quiet rage burned inside of them. Fang hovered between anguish and relief, bewildered by each of them. A memory flashed in her mind, flitted through briefly before it dissolved into emptiness. The soldier walked passed her without a glance.

"Wait!" Fang called out, "Wait a minute!"

With reluctance, the soldier turned to her. Her bright blue eyes narrowed in scrutiny; rage hinted at the lines in her face, confounded by a muted grief. The huntress crept forward and the soldier's brow furrowed, hesitation at the fringe of her expression. Fang was unsettled by the gaze that bore into her; her mind struggled for something just out of reach. What was it? An enemy, someone she'd betrayed – was that it? She couldn't be sure.

"What is it?" The ghost asked.

"Who are you?" The huntress answered.

The soldier grimaced and her jaw tightened. A deftly quick hand slid the gunblade from its holster – the blade swinging out, arching up to come down on her shoulder. Fang yelped and crushed her hand to her arm. Crimson streamed in between her fingers and onto the ground. The sword leapt into the air again, rattled down onto the floor as Fang ducked away. She tore her pointed staff from its resting place, held it steady despite the searing pain.

"Now that I've found you," the soldier said wistfully, "I won't let you get away."

The misery in her face betrayed her ferocity. She was not wicked, not like the other creatures that challenged and fought her, wanting to kill her outright. There was something else in the soldier's voice, something desperate, like the last remnants of a flame going out in the dark – a weakness unprotected. Fang was bewildered by it, ignored the distraction.

"Fight me," the ghost said firmly.

"Why?" Fang winced at the pain as she held the staff prone.

"Because if you don't... I'll kill you."

They danced around each other, circling, eyes focused on their twitching muscles for signs of movement. Lightning ducked to the left as Fang charged forward. The soldier retaliated. Fang ducked to the right. The sound of metal chimed around them as they parried the strikes. The huntress struggled to keep up, fought the agony trembling through her nerves. The soldier was holding back, irritated.

She pushed Fang back with a spell and the huntress tumbled to the ground. She composed herself quickly –suffused with anguish and frustration – and lunged at the soldier. The gunblade was fixed at the soldier's side, locked in a fist. Fang buried the speared staff into her flesh with ease. She screamed. Blood mixed into her bellybutton, coated the pearl-white piercing in pink. The huntress regarded her handiwork blankly; horror crept into her conscious by degrees.

"Lightning?"

Fang wrenched the staff away and the soldier whimpered from the pain, fought to get onto her feet. The huntress gathered her in her arms and anchored her, helped her to stand. She cupped Lightning's face, searched her expression for some measure of recognition. Light turned into her open palm and closed her eyes, kissed the soft flesh pressed against her lips. Tears glossed her eyes and she frowned.

Another phantom penetrated the fog: a young woman in a purple dress. She carried a golden staff.

"Light, are you okay?" The woman asked.

The ghost looked up, eyes wide with terror.

"No!" Fang clawed at her face but her fingertips cut through the air as Lightning slowly vanished. Her lips moved as she faded; her message indiscernible. It wasn't what she thought she saw, it couldn't have been.

"Light?"

The purgatory turned into a dark oblivion. The ground dissolved beneath her and in an instant, she was falling through the air.

Her eyes flew open, irritated by the liquid that stung them. She reflexively inhaled and choked, lungs filling with water. Her limbs flailed and she clamoured for the surface. Her head punched through the top of the water and she gagged on the influx of oxygen. Her arms clumsily smacked at the water and her legs kicked furiously to keep her afloat. Her vision focused, droplets distorting the world at its peripheral edges. Parts of fragmented crystal floated beside her.

She whipped around in the water, estranged in her new environment. But she knew this place, knew its inner workings, recalled their past together, and in that instant she knew that something was missing, someone dear to her.

She dove back down into the water, finding the dark blue abyss empty of life. Out of air, she soared back to the top and broke through, took a breath.

"Vanille!" She yelled.

The water swayed with her movements, the surface lifeless.

A booming groan rumbled up from the world beneath. Fang dove down and heard the lethargic, piercing crack of the crystal chamber, saw the nerve-like meander of the ruptures at the bottom. It carried up along the walls, frost-white and splintering. A moment passed into eternity. The bottom of the chamber collapsed and the water surged downward, taking her with it.

The jet of water disoriented her; she saw froth and white, slipped between the surface and suffocation beneath the heavy wave. It was over as swiftly as it started, culminating in a searing pain through her limbs, hard, wet mud and earth beneath her body. Her chest heaved and her frame shook from the stress. She stole a glance at her forearm. It was still there: that same tarnished, white mark of the Pulse l'Cie. Fang tasted blood on her tongue, closed her eyes and welcomed the darkness.

OOO

TO BE CONTINUED...


End file.
